Looking back at the computer display—the
one that displayed the basic information on his Zoanoid
model—Kenji almost started fidgeting. The waiting had always
been kind of hard for him, but he liked to think that he’d
learned at least some patience. Dr. Balkus had been showing him
how to refine the design of his Alvix Zoanoid, but then he’d
left, and Kenji didn’t know why, though he was doing well on his
own.
The computer was making a strange
humming sound, but when he’d tried to ask one of the technicians
about the noise, no one else had seemed to hear it. So Kenji had
tried to ignore it as best he could, but it was still
bothersome. Looking up as the sense of another Zoalord nearby
washed over him, Kenji saw that Fried’rich van Purg’stall was
walking towards him.
"Oh, hi Fried’rich!" Kenji called
happily.
"Hello, little one," Fried’rich said,
smiling. "Hamilcal told me that you were attempting to design a
Zoanoid of your own?"
"Yeah." Kenji nodded happily. "I’m going
to surprise dad with it. Do you think he’ll like it?"
"I am certain that Lord Imakarum will be
very satisfied with your design, little one. What are you going
to call your Zoanoid?"
"Alvix."
"Alvix," Fried’rich repeated, sounding
like he was thinking about something. "That is an interesting
designation. Did you think of it on your own?"
"Yeah, I thought of it all by myself,"
Kenji said, looking very happy with himself.
"Well done then, little one." Putting
his hand on Kenji’s shoulder, Fried’rich looked at the Zoanoid
design displayed on the screen. "It seems to be a very sound
design that you have created."
"You really think so?" Kenji asked
eagerly.
"Yes, child. I think it could even be a
counterpart to Gregole and Ramochis in the Japanese Sector."
"Wow," Kenji said with a smile. "You
really think that my design could become that widely used?"
Fried’rich smiled as he nodded. "It is a
rather basic design, even as Ramochis and Gregole are, so it
stands to reason that this Alvix of yours will have a comparable
processing success rate."
Looking back at his Zoanoid design,
Kenji felt Fried’rich pat him on the shoulder, but before the
other Zoalord could leave, Kenji turned to him.
"Do you think you could maybe stay with
me, Fried’rich? I know you probably have a lot of other things
to do, but do you think you could take a little time off? I
don’t want to be alone," Kenji admitted.
Fried’rich considered the child sitting
before him, for that was what Lord Imakarum’s son truly was: a
child. In spite of the fact that Imakarum’s son appeared to be
the same age as his father, it was at moments like this that
Fried’rich could truly appreciate what Ingriam Mirabilis was
going through. Placing his hand on Ingriam’s left shoulder,
Fried’rich mentally pulled one of the many unoccupied chairs
over to them.
From the way he smiled, the child seemed
to be content with that.
XxXxXxX
Grumbling as he stalked down the hallway
and occasionally swearing violently at the few Standard Zoanoids
that didn’t get out of his way fast enough, Zektor made his way
back to his room. He was pissed, primarily at old man Balkus for
not personally telling him about the side effects that his
little ‘procedure’ had, although he did have a fair amount of
ill feeling for Sharru, since she had evidently been told to
tell him that in the first goddamn place.
Smacking a particularly slow-moving
Standard Zoanoid upside the head with the crutch gripped in his
right hand, Zektor kept moving after he’d managed to regain his
equilibrium. When he finally made it back to his room, Zektor
threw the door open and stalked inside, slamming it shut behind
him. He stalked over to his bed, threw himself down on it, and
roughly flung away his crutches.
Great. Just great. Of all the
stupid non-choices I could have been stuck with, this has to be
the worst of them. Either I just let it all go and let that
bastard Zoanoid-eater get away with turning all of my friends
into his own personal buffet, or I…
In the end though, Zektor couldn’t
even bring himself to finish the thought. As he was, Zektor was
one of the most powerful – and therefore respected – Hyper
Zoanoids in the entire Chronos organization.
The problem was that Neo-Zektor,
which was what old man Balkus was going to name him once he’d
gone through reprocessing, was going to be a Lost Unit, and
everyone knew that Lost Units were the worst, most unreliable
kinds of Zoanoid that existed. Aptom was a Lost Unit, and even a
Standard Zoanoid could see just how untrustworthy
that
rat-bastard was. So that was the thing: Zektor could stay as he
was, a Hyper Zoanoid, and just forget about what that… that
thing
had done to his friends, or he could go through the procedure
and end up just like him.
Sure, it would be the ultimate form of
irony to see Aptom getting his ass kicked by another Lost Unit,
and getting reprocessed was really his best – if not his only –
chance of getting his revenge on Aptom. Still, there were
principles to think about here: Lost Units, while some of them
were at least marginally useful, were mostly a bunch of stupid,
one-off freaks. Slumping back down on his bed, Zektor wondered
just what one of the other guys would do in this situation.
If he’d been the one to be absorbed
instead of Elegen, would that have made any difference? Would
Elegen have been willing to go through with a procedure that,
while it would give him the sheer, overwhelming power that would
be needed to get his revenge, would also end up turning him into
something not that far removed from the thing he wanted revenge
against? Zektor shuddered briefly as he remembered something
else that Dr. Balkus had told him.
It’d been an offhand comment, as if the
doctor had been too preoccupied with something else that he’d
been preparing for to spare more than a few minutes’ thought for
what Zektor was going through. That hadn’t felt so good. The
fact that Sharru had been there with him, lending him her
support had made him feel a bit better about what he was going
to do, but that still didn’t change the fact that he would die
if he went through with the procedure.
The risk of dying in combat was one that
Zektor faced every time he went out on a mission, but it was
something entirely different when it was your own biology that
was going to do you in. Then it wasn’t a matter of luck or skill
or who wanted to survive more; it was waiting until your cells
couldn’t handle any more stress and just stopped working.
Turning to lay on his right side, facing away from the door,
Zektor continued to think about the choice that he’d been given.
XxXxXxX
For a minute, the kid had looked as if
he’d been about to wake up, so Galma had injected him with
another dose of sodium pentathol. The kid had settled back down
quickly after that, leaving Galma and his fellow Galma to push
the gurney into the waiting transport plane. For a minute, the
lead Galma wondered just what was going to be done with the kid,
but all Lord Caerleon had said was that he was important to
Chronos, and Galma knew that he wouldn’t be getting any other
answers.
Still, it was kind of interesting to
think about why this kid was being taken to the ultra top-secret
Dead Sea Plant. Then, deciding that he wasn’t going to spend any
more time thinking about a question that he was probably never
going to get an answer to, Galma pushed the kid’s gurney into
the plane. There were techs who could take care of the kid in
there, and Galma was more than ready to write him completely out
of his life.
XxXxXxX
Once the doors to the hold had closed,
the Ramochis who had been pulling the gurney with the red-haired
kid on it moved behind and started pushing. The kid wasn’t going
anywhere, what with all the tranquilizers he’d been given when
he’d been inside Chronos Briton, and the extra dose that one of
the Galma had given him had clinched it in Ramochis’ mind. Of
course, that didn’t mean that he was going to remove the
restraints.
The red-haired kid had been switched
over to a different bed sometime during his mock-examination in
Chronos Briton. Or, at least that was what Ramochis had been
told by one of the Galma as they had shoved the bed into the
plane. Ramochis hadn’t really cared to know just where the
restraints had been put on, just so long as they worked, which,
since the kid was so heavily sedated, they had a very good
chance of doing.
Pushing him into a medical isolation
tent, Ramochis locked the bed he was on into the heavy
restraints that had been bolted into the wall and floor—the
restraints would keep it from sliding around in the plane if
they happened to hit any turbulence. Zipping the tent shut
behind him as he stepped out, Ramochis turned on one of the gas
tanks; he could see the gas flowing out of the vents set into
the walls.
The kid would be out for the entire trip
to the Dead Sea Plant, so there wasn’t any real need to stand
there and watch over him like some kind of glorified babysitter.
Happy with the prospect of getting to take some time off—at
least until he and the others made it to the Dead Sea
Plant—Ramochis headed into the front area of the plane, just
behind the cabin.
There was a sort of rudimentary eating
area there, nothing more than a table and a pair of chairs
bolted to the wall and floor with a few supply cabinets to get
food out of, but it was enough for Ramochis to have at least one
or two meals. Maybe not the best of meals, but that wasn’t what
he was looking for. Opening the nearest cabinet, he found an
ample supply of protein bars, beef jerky, and bottled water.
Picking up six packs of jerky and three bottles of water, he
settled himself at the table and ate. Once he was finished with
his meal, Ramochis sat back in the chair and just sort of dozed.
It was a rare opportunity for a Standard
Zoanoid like him to have the opportunity to just sit and not
think about anything, to just let his mind wander on a boring
detail where other people did almost all of the work, and he was
just backup muscle if something went wrong. Ramochis remembered,
with no small amount of humor, that he’d almost literally had to
beat off three Razell, two Gregole, and a fellow Ramochis to get
this assignment.
Folding his arms, Ramochis lay his head
on them, satisfied with the fact that the red-haired mystery kid
wasn’t going to go anywhere.