Norma Crouger, seeing her son still
dozing, smiled indulgently. It was always nice for her to be
able to see Ryan when he wasn’t quite awake, with his red hair
still mussed up from sleep and that adorable, hazy look in his
green eyes. Norma always felt good when she saw him like that,
but she also felt a strong maternal urge to protect him, since
Ryan always looked so vulnerable when he was sleeping, and there
was no way in hell that she was going to let anything hurt her
son.
Now, though, it was time to get him up
to go to school, and she walked over to his bed. "Ryan," she
called softly.
"Iurgmzzzat," Ryan muttered, meaning ‘I
hate mornings’.
"Ryan," Norma called again, almost
laughing
"Gowway," ‘Go away’.
"I’m not leaving this room until you get
up, young man," Norma said, trying to sound stern while holding
off laughter.
"Nogginup," ‘Not getting up.
Laughing softly, Norma whipped the
covers off of Ryan and got ready to pull him out of bed, but
when she saw the sores on Ryan’s back, she stopped cold. Staring
in disbelief at the blistering lesions on her son’s back, she
pulled up the covers just enough to keep him warm and then
touched one. It was hard and leathery and didn’t feel much like
human skin at all.
Worried now, she touched the other one
and found it had exactly the same hard, unnatural feel as the
first. Pulling the covers up all of the way,
she hurried out of Ryan’s room. There was no way on Earth that
she was going to let her son go off to school when he was so
clearly not well. Norma also needed to call the hospital and
make an appointment, hoping that Ethan was there, since their
old family doctor was very good at what he did. He was also a
close friend of the family, and she trusted him implicitly.
XxXxXxX
When Ryan finally returned to the land
of the living, he was surprised that he felt so genuinely
rested. Normally, his mom would pull him out of bed, and he’d
end up getting dressed and ready for school in a sort of
semiconscious daze. Now, though, he felt better than he ever
had. Even on a weekend, when he could sleep all day if he wanted
to, he didn’t feel that good.
Hell, he didn’t even feel the need to
stretch and work the kinks out of his muscles, but he did
anyway, just because that was what he always did when he first
woke up. Glancing over at the clock, just out of morbid
curiosity since he was sure he was abysmally late by now, Ryan
saw that it was already ten. Normally classes started at eight
sharp, hence the need to get out of bed by seven thirty.
Unless today was a weird day, Ryan was
sure that he had just missed a great deal of allegedly important
class time. Ryan could give a flying crap about that, but he did
wonder why his mom hadn’t shown up to drag him out of bed. Not
that he was complaining or anything; he was just kind of
curious. Leaning back against his sheets and blankets, Ryan saw
with some surprise that his mom was coming back into the room.
"Ryan? Good, you’re awake." His mom
seemed to be more relieved by that than Ryan really thought she
should. It wasn’t as if he’d never taken a shower and then gone
to bed before. She moved quickly over to his bed and laid her
hand on his forehead. "Well, you don’t have a fever, that’s
good. How are you really feeling, though?"
"I feel fine," Ryan said earnestly.
"Better than I ever have, in fact."
As soon as those words were hanging in
the air, Ryan felt a slight chill. Maybe he’d just been watching
too much Stargate: SG-1, but that sentence always seemed to be a
prelude to badness. Sometimes only a small amount, sure, but
mostly the badness invoked by those fateful words was badness on
an epic scale. Saying them was practically inviting the Irony
Gods to smite the person stupid enough to have spoken them. At
that thought, though, Ryan had to laugh at himself—he was really
getting paranoid in his old age.
It was probably nothing.
"What’s so funny?"
"Me," Ryan said, still chuckling. "I’ve
definitely been watching too much Stargate: SG-1. Every time
anyone has ever said something like that, it’s either because
they’ve been infected by a Goa’uld or something equally
horrible."
"You’re right, that generally is the
procedure," his mom laughed. "Well, since things like that
generally don’t happen in this universe, I think you’re
covered."
Ryan started laughing then, and it
wasn’t long before his mom had joined in—watching Stargate and
its spin-off TV series Stargate: SG-1 was one of his favorite
things to do with his mom.
XxXxXxX
Luggnagg de Krumeggnik, holding the
progress reports from Chronos Los Angeles, smiled secretively to
himself: everything was going just as he and the others had
planned. Their stronghold at the Los Angeles branch had not been
discovered, and if he, Khan, and Hiyern had anything to say
about the matter, it never would be. Moreover, the other
Overlords were all too preoccupied with the problem of the Anti
Chronos Task Force to be much of a hindrance.
Still, there was the small matter of
Imakarum and his son. Imakarum was fanatically loyal to
Alkanphel, something that Krumeggnik found rather odd, given the
fact that Murakami had seemed to want nothing more than to rip
the entire Chronos organization apart with his bare hands. Khan
had even talked at one point of perhaps recruiting Murakami to
their side, re-processing him into a full Zoalord, and then
setting him loose on Chronos. The son would have perhaps been an
asset as well, or at the very least been useful as a hostage,
but now none of that was possible.
Sighing, Krumeggnik continued walking.
He would have to destroy the progress reports that he currently
held, since they were sure to give away the plan that their
group had worked on for so long. That was, after all, the entire
reason that he had volunteered to inspect the Los Angeles branch
personally; fortunately for him and the others, Krumeggnik had
become rather adept at falsifying Chronos documents. Thinking
back to what he’d seen at the Los Angeles branch inevitably
brought back thoughts of Commander Gyou.
It was really most unfortunate that the
former Regional Commander had died back at Mt. Minakami, since
the man’s almost complete lack of subtlety had made him a very
good cover for their own clandestine activities. It would be
that much more dangerous for Krumeggnik and the others to pursue
their own agenda with him gone, and Khan would doubtless be
worried about that. Hiyern would of course suggest that they put
off their activities until they had gotten hold of the new
situation.
Krumeggnik was personally of the opinion
that life, especially an eternal one such as that enjoyed by all
Zoalords, was for the risking. What possible entertainment could
be had from playing things safely, especially when one possessed
such powers as theirs? Alkanphel was not, after all, the
omniscient and all-powerful god that Balkus and Imakarum liked
to paint him as.
Thoughts of Imakarum led almost
automatically to thoughts of the younger Mirabilis, Ingriam.
Rather fitting, actually, Krumeggnik thought, since the child
was basically an appendage of his father. Still, he could
perhaps be a useful pawn, provided they were very cautious in
how they went about that—even he wasn’t eager to risk the wrath
of Mirabilis the elder if the other Zoalord found out that they
were threatening his son.
It was an odd thing to think about,
given that Imakarum’s son was not yet seven years old—odd, at
least until one met and spoke with him. Ingriam had all the
habits and mannerisms of a child. And also, the boy still
possessed every scrap of the naïve trust that had gotten him
kidnapped by the late Commander Gyou in the first place.
Krumeggnik often wondered why Mirabilis the elder did not take
the initiative and simply purge the boy’s mind of those useless
and potentially dangerous attributes.
It was a puzzle, but at the moment not
one that Krumeggnik was particularly interested in solving. He
had other things to think about, not just falsifying the reports
from the Los Angeles branch; he also had to make certain that
his own branch, Chronos Africa, was functioning with just enough
efficiency to keep the other Zoalords off his back. Khan and
Hiyern were of course doing the same.