Authors: Dhayaa Anbajagane
“Pretty much,” Ruby said. “I don't think they like earthlings. You guys are probably tasteless.”
Taylor laughed, “If being tasteless means I won't be food for some extra-terrestrial creature then I’m fine with it.”
“That Pluthencelet was an idiot though,” she said. “Its body was a good disguise, but its mind had only one thought. ‘Yummy Griffin’. “
Taylor laughed, “Well, you must look delicious to all the Pluthencelets out there.”
“We’d better get out of here, the enemy might trace that fissure and find us here,” Ruby said. She didn't know who the enemy was though. All she could see on this ship were a bunch of happy kids and relaxed adults. That didn't sound like a group that would attack anyone, let alone a griffin and a Dark Knight.
Taylor walked to the door, “Let’s find out what’s on the other side, shall we?” she smiled as it opened up.
A loud gunshot rang through walls and a bullet grazed past Taylor’s ear. Ruby reared up protectively and growled. Taylor immediately shut the door and moved away from it.
“Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,” she said.
Ruby didn’t know where that bullet had come from but it wasn’t friendly fire.
“The attacker wasn't close by,” Taylor said. “Definitely a sniper, but it’s strange that the sniper used a mechanical rifle rather than a laser blaster.”
“
Primitive technology,
” Ruby said. “
This ship doesn't look primitive though.
”
“No it doesn't,” Taylor said. “Let’s get back into the vent. Our sniper will come after us once he realizes he didn't get me.”
Ruby crouched low below the vent. Taylor climbed onto her as a boost and squeezed herself into the vent. After Ruby was sure Taylor had gotten in, she shrunk herself and slipped in between the edges effortlessly.
“
What exactly happened to you?
” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“
Well, you were there one moment and then you were gone.
”
“The Pluthencelet pulled me down. I felt some sort of arm or tentacle grab my leg and tug me.”
The whole vent tilted forward and Taylor and Ruby flew through. Ruby tried to latch onto the walls with her claws but she could only slice the metal with her sharp talons. They did their job a little too well. She could see a harsh white light coming from what seemed to be the end of the vent. Voices filled her head.
“
Who are they?
”
“
I hope I get to have some fun this time.
”
“
Just when am I going to get promoted?
”
She twisted in agony as every thought in the region was crammed into her mind. She tried to focus, which was hard to do while having a hundred thoughts injected into you every second. But she finally found one voice. The voice of a man on the other side of a vent. The shooter.
She fine-tuned in on the man’s thoughts. Those were what decided their fate.
“
We kill them.
”
***
Taylor turned around rapidly trying to find out where she was. It had only been seconds since she had fallen out of the vent.
“Why, it seems we have ourselves a pretty one this time,” a voice said.
She turned around. One, two, three huge mechanical guns were pointed at her.
From the corner of her eye she could see a restrained Ruby being hauled away by a few more men. Taylor wondered how Ruby had given in so easily. Maybe they had taken her by surprise. She focused on the current situation and turned towards the men.
“What do you want?” she asked
“You’ve got some nerve, missy,” one man said.
“Yeah,” another joined in. “Coming to our ship, infiltrating our base, and you want to know what
we
want?”
“Your ship attacked ours,” Taylor said coldly. “Don't you dare say this was my fault.”
The men looked at each other. Taylor could see a silent conversation going on between them. They uttered some name that Taylor didn’t quite catch.
One of them stepped forward, “We’re taking you to the leader. You can talk to him instead.”
Taylor nodded, “What about my griffin?” she asked. The men looked at Taylor’s cold stare. She could see their will to intimidate disintegrate with every second.
“Release the beast,” one of them bellowed.
“Her name is Ruby,” Taylor muttered under her breath.
She assessed the situation. These men seemed to be innocent ones who had no idea what was going on. But for all Taylor knew they could be Pluthencelets in disguise, waiting to get their snack. She didn't worry about it though. The possibility was one in a million. Taylor mounted Ruby and followed the men to their leader.
They wound about staircases, walked up ramps and jumped into elevators. The men finally stopped in front of a bright white door. One of them stepped forward. Patches of the wall around the door opened up and lasers shone out the gaps, jointly scanning his body.
“
Identity confirmed,
” a mechanical male voice said. The door slid open and the men urged Taylor to head inside. The inner walls of the room were colored snow white. Though they had a serene look, Taylor could not help looking at them in a ghastly aspect. The walls seemed to be crying to her, begging her to leave. She dismissed the weird thoughts from her mind.
Now wasn't the time to be talking to walls
, she thought.
She noticed that the place was in fact a lab. Hundreds of test tubes lay upright on tables or scattered on the floor. Flamboyant colors of liquid flowed in glass pipes that went from beaker to beaker, turning to gas in one, and condensing to liquid in another. A man muttered to himself at the corner of the room. Taylor glanced at him. She hadn’t remembered seeing him with these men. He was someone new. She wondered if this was the ‘leader’ they had been talking about.
The man had flowing silver hair pulled back. His hair was ridiculously long, reaching down to his knees. His tall stature was draped in a white lab coat that hung to his shins. He heard them come in and turned towards them. A shriek of fear escaped Taylor’s lips. The man’s eyes were an evil red! With his red eyes and silver hair, the man looked like an incarnation of the devil.
“Well, hello there,” he said, his voice low and mystical, his words making her feel like she was being sucked into an abyss.
Ruby growled protectively, her restrained talons scraping the floor with harsh sound.
“Oh-ho, what have we here?” he ran over to Ruby. “I haven’t seen a Griffin in ages!”
Ruby unfolded her wings and flapped them, sending a huge gust of wind that threw the man back and pinned him to the wall.
“Feisty isn’t she?” he said.
“This guy is your leader?” Taylor asked the men. She didn't know anything about the hierarchy of ranks on this ship, but this guy was clearly couldn’t be a leader.
“Dr.D has been leading us for a long time,” one of the men said.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
“He’s might be crazy.”
Taylor’s day was looking brighter already. One of the men helped Dr.D up back onto his feet.
“Thank you,” he dusted himself. “You may all leave now,” he waved at all the men. Before Taylor realized it, the men had left the room, and the door had been locked firmly.
Oh yeah, she was also stuck in there with a mad scientist.
She tried not to panic, “How about explaining why I was brought here?” she asked.
Dr.D sat down on his chair, “You see, I was the one who ordered the ship to use the phase beam,” he coolly twirled an empty test tube in his fingers. “It was pretty easy to see you had evacuated the ship so I made the men create fissures in the vent and rat you out.”
Taylor clenched her palm into a fist.
“My, such anger. All I wanted to do was examine you,” he said.
“Examine what?”
“Why, a Dark Knight of course!” he exclaimed.
Taylor stepped back. Not everyone could recognize a Dark Knight right off the bat, and the ones that did were the ones she never wanted to.
Dr.D smiled at her. “The Dark Knights have always had a high affinity to using their life energy and creating physically enhancing techniques,” he said. “I believe the secret to your
power infusion
lies in your brain.”
Taylor glanced around the room. Her mind working like clockwork.
Dr.D stood up, “I hope you won’t mind me examining you,” he said. “Very closely” and with that the man swooped by Taylor and punched her in the stomach. Taylor felt herself slide to the ground. Her vision blurry, her lungs breathless. She was helpless, knocked down, and in front of her was a madman.
Oh joy.
***
“Hi, Jade,” Q said. “Boy, am I glad to see you again. I thought you had left this place for good.”
“
Windalf tried to take me along with him,
” the griffin said. “
But it was easy to give him the slip.”
“Well, it’s awesome that you’re here.
”
“So where do we go now?” Burke asked. “We can’t waste any time in finding the Lambda Driver.”
“
This is where I come in,
” Jade said. “
Get on,
” he lowered one of his wings to the ground, and Q and Burke climbed onto his back using the makeshift ramp.
“So where are we goi – aaah!” Q yelled out as Jade surged at top speed. He flew from the cave, into the ocean and out of the surface. In seconds, the endless ocean vanished and the cold darkness of space welcomed them.
“I’ll ask you again, Q said. “Where are we goi – ahh!” he screamed as Jade powered into a speedy ‘space flight’ mode.
“It’s not funny,” Q complained. “You keep interrupting me.”
“Those interruptions were not because of sudden speed bursts,” Jade said. “But because of teleportation.”
“What?” they asked. They hadn't noticed any teleportation occurring at all.
Griffins can teleport
? Q wondered.
“Look there,” Jade thrust his head to his left.
A few thousand miles away Q saw a small planet. For some reason the planet seemed to look familiar to him. Its misty pinkish fog made the place look like it would be right at home for Dracula. A feeling of deja vu struck him. He had had this thought before, and then it dawned on him. His eyes widened, his face both excited and curious at the same time. He knew what he was looking at. “That’s Zygrade!” he yelled.
“
Of course, this isn’t the Zygrade you know,
” Jade said. “
This is the Zygrade in the Anti-verse.
”
“Amazing,” mumbled Burke. He took out a notebook and wrote down something.
“What’re you writing?” Q leaned in towards him.
“I’m recording my observations,” he said. “Information about the Anti-verse would be very useful to me.”
These scientists
, he chuckled.
“Anyway,” he turned to Jade. “Why exactly are we going to Zygrade to find the Lambda Driver?”
“
I read Windalf’s mind before he was teleported. I was able to piece together that there is something on Zygrade that has a vital connection to the Lambda Driver. It is our only lead thus far.
”
“Fair enough,” Q said. What Jade had said seemed like a pretty good lead to follow, so he had no issues with it.
A few moments later the great griffin sunk down towards the Zygrade’s pink, misty clouds.
“Hey Jade?” He asked. “What are we going to do about Aliea’s security system? “
It was too late. A huge missile slammed into Jade’s wings and exploded. Q covered his face with his hands, expecting the worst but when he removed them he noticed that he was still flying, unharmed.
“Umm, what happened?” he asked Jade, who was flying peacefully, deeper into the clouds.
A sphere of green flickered around them, “
I can create shields as well,
” Jade said.
“Griffins can do that?”
“We usually cannot. I am an exception.”
Another missile hurtled towards them. Jade effortlessly kept up the shield. He so confident that the missile wouldn't break through that he didn't even glance at it. The missile exploded with a deafening blast, but that was all it did. Nothing else. It was like watching a fireworks display, loads of explosion and smoke, but not a single injury.
Burke crawled up to Q. “It may be a stupid question but why aren’t we just avoiding the missiles.”
“I guess staying with Windalf for so long made his mind go all wrong,” he chuckled.
“Then unwrong it.”
Q looked at Burke, whose face was red with embarrassment.
“Sorry, slip of tongue,” he said. “Just make him take us down to the surface. These explosions are making me nervous.”