Late at night and deep in the heart of Providence, their secret weapon, Rex, was tossing and turning agitatedly in his sleep. It had been a rough few weeks since the mission to the Amazon and discovering that Rex had a brother. Dr. Rylander's base had been completely destroyed, but that didn't stop the agents from investigating the area if only to confirm the death of Van Kleiss. So far nothing of importance had been discovered.
Bobo eyeballed his roommate before yanking a pillow over his head. "It was bad enough when he snored for a week, now I got to put up with him talking in his sleep? The doc should just give him a heavy sedative so I could get some sleep? Rex shut up!"
Rex didn't hear his sidekick's words as he was lost in an intense and vivid dream. He found himself once more in the Amazon. The dream was so real he felt like everything his senses encountered were real. In fact when he brushed his hand against a large fern, it cut him leaving a trail of blood droplets.
"Okay, this is the freakiest dream I've ever had. Holiday said I couldn't get hurt in dream, so does this mean I'm not dreaming?" Rex wondered, as he examined his hand. He wanted to wake up, but he felt like something was calling him. Straining his ears he could hear a faint voice calling out to him. "Rex, come to me Rex," the voice had almost a musical quality to it.
"Who are you? Where are you? Help me find you please!" Rex shouted. Activating his nanenites he created his Rex Ride complete with the battering ram. Placing his goggles on his goggles', he said, "Let's ride! Keep talking! Guide me to you!" Revving up the engine he took off not realizing that in the real world he had just destroyed the door to his bedroom and was careening through Providence with alarms blazing and people shouting.
Both Six and Holiday had been having a late night discussion over hot coca when the alarms started blaring. "What in the world?"
"One guess, the kid escaped."
A monitor turned on showing White Knight frowning and looking disturbed. "Not quite, at the moment he seems to be attempting mow down all our agents. Here's the vid feed," White said, pressing some buttons. The security footage did show Rex using his ride to race through the base. He seemed to be trying to find a way out and was using his ride to disable any who got in his ways. "That kid has finally flipped. Six I want to you to secure him and put in the Hole until we sort out this mess."
"Sir! Please there must be another explanation about what's happening. Rex wouldn't do this! If you just give me a few minutes I could figure out what is happening to him!" Holiday pleaded, when the computer screens started flashing. Holiday hands flew over the keyboard trying to isolate the anomaly. "I don't believe it! Somehow Bobo got into the Zoo after lockdown and has rallied the occupants. They attacking the handlers and disabling the defense grid. I've called in more keepers, but I don't know if they can handle it."
"It seems like our pets have all decide to cause us a little anarchy tonight. Six, take your squad and start eliminating all EVOs. This has a gone on long enough."
"Sir, if we do that we loose months if not years of valuable research needed to find a cure to the nanite crises. This is too much of coincidence to natural," Six replied.
"You think an outside source is responsible? I thought the Pack had scattered with the death of Van Kleiss. Do you really think they have rallied under a new flag so fast?"
Have all our sensors and systems record the EVOs while the handles get control in the Zoo. My squad will capture Rex and bring him here for full evaluation by Holiday."
White Knight thought about it for a few minutes going over the pros and cons. He knew they couldn't lose Rex and with the kind of research that Providence was conducting the destruction of the test subjects would set them back to square one. "Very well capture and contained, but don't let him escape! Holiday be prepared to do a full work up on Rex upon arrival. I want to know why he decided to suddenly trash the base."
"Right, thank you sir," Holiday said, bowing as White Knight's image left the screen. "Thank you. You better hurry and secure Rex. I'll stay here and monitor the action. Maybe I can find something to explain all this."
"You better of that kid is in for the worse grounding of his life," Six said, brandishing his katanas. His team took of trying to find Rex who was last spotted ditching his ride in favor of his Punk Busters to scale the elevator shaft towards the roof. Cursing his luck Six dispatched his team, half scaling the elevators and the rest took to the stairs to cut off the teen. "Holiday, where is he?"
"He's still climbing the main elevator shaft. His biometrics are very unusual. Some of these readings I'm getting don't make sense. His brain waves activity is erratic and his physical readings indicate he's under stress," Holiday reported to Six. She quickly compared the biometrics readings to that coming from tagged specimens from the zoo. They were nearly identical which was strange in itself. They may all be EVOs, but different species should be giving off different biometrics. They were all being manipulated by the same source, but what was it?
Meanwhile Rex was still trying to escape, not realizing he was sleepwalking. His dream was too vivid and voice was getting louder and stronger. At the moment he thought he was climbing up a cliff face to get to the other side. He could almost make out the words the female voice was saying. "Whoever you are, can you talk a little louder? All these insects are making it difficult to find you."
"Rex, follow my voice. Listen the song and you'll know where to go. Heart don't fail me now. Courage don't desert me; don't turn back now that we're here. People always say life is full of choices. No one ever mentions fear
or how a road can seem so seems long or how the world can seems so vast.
Courage see me through, heart I trust in you on this journey to the past."
The song caused Rex's eyes to glaze over. Images of a fortress and buildings on a dark night appeared in his mind's eye. He turned towards the voice whispering, "Journey to my past. I must go and trust my heart to find my answers." Rex reached the plateau and was about to activate his boogie pack to fly away when he found himself surrounded by five ugly EVOs, the leader was brandishing a pair of long sharp claws. "Oh man, I so don't have time for this!"
In reality Rex had made it to the top floor and could have flown out through an escape hatch leading to the roof if he wasn't corned by Six and his team. They were all brandishing tranquilizer guns, some lasers, and of course Six had his katanas out. "Rex, its time to stop this and go back to your room. I promise you won't be in trouble with White Knight."
"Back off ugly I don't want to hurt you!" Rex shouted, creating his Smack Hands in defense. "Now are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?"
"Shoot him!" Six ordered. All at once a barrage of lasers, tranquilizer darts rained down on the teen. Rex smashed his hands down on the floor causing it to rise up as a shield. He then punched it hard sending it crashing into a few of Six's men. He let out a grunt of pain as he was hit in the side by some of the laser fire singing his clothes leaving burn marks.
"I told you to use setting three not five! White Knight wants him in one piece!" Six ordered his men. The Providence agents grumbled, but switched the setting from burn to stun. They got ready to fire again when the came under attack by cross fire from Bobo who was also accompanied by some of the animal EVOs, who started to rip and tear at the men.
"Dammit it!" Six said. Making a judgment call he went after Rex was just starting to get up. Twirling his katanas he hoped to knock some sense into the powered teen. "Don't make me do this Rex!" he shouted making a downward slash. The blades cut off his Smack Hands. He then performed a spin kick knocked the teen back a few feet, his goggles flying off in another direction. Rex lay still by the elevator shaft. Not taking any chances Six whipped out some cuffs ready to restrain the boy.
In Rex's mind he was still in the jungle and the voice that was guiding him was getting louder, more urgent. It was telling him that time was running out to find out the truth about who he was. "Somewhere down this road I know someone's waiting. Years of dreams just can't be wrong. Arms will open wide. I'll be safe and wanted finally home where I belong. Well starting here my life begins starting now, I'm learning fast. Courage see me through heart I trust in you, on this journey to the past."
Rex eyes snapped open and he sprang to his feet brandishing his BAS. He slashed open some nearby pipes blinding Six. He kept slashing forcing the agent back until he was with the others. Bobo and his pals had corralled all the humans and nodded at Rex. Rex pressed his hand against the wall forcing the containment doors to slide into place sealing the agents in. Without another word he activated his Boogie Pack and flew off. Providence tried to activate their defense system, but discovered their plant EVOs had clogged up the works. They had lost their weapon again.
About an hour later Six was nursing the mother of all headaches. The handlers had managed to wrangle al the run away EVOs and get them back in the hold. Bobo had woken up with no knowledge of what had happened and was being subjected to a full body scan. "I resent this invasion of my privacy! You're not going to stick that thing up my butt are you?" He asked as Holiday strolled over with a long, pole with a probe stuck to end of it.
"I just might if I think it will help us find Rex. Every EVO we had in Providence coordinator their efforts to aid and abed Rex in his escape. We have no idea where he went and unless I can find a communality between all of you then we may never see Rex again. So you will shut up and let me finish the exam or so help me I'll feed you to Mel!"
"Slim your girlfriend has gone insane!"
"She's not my girlfriend. Holiday, I want to find him as much as you do, but threatening Bobo isn't going to help. Calm down and take a deep breath," Six told her, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I've already have Ops scanning for his biometrics. As long as he's using his nanities we can track him down."
A screen lit up revealing a very ticked off White Knight. "How did he escape again Agent Six? I thought that you and your men had the situation under control."
"There were a few unforeseen variables to the mission. Rex retaliated with a vengeance after he was burned by laser fire. When I approached him to restrain him he attacked me as if he didn't have any clue to whom I was. My team and were contained before I could figure out what was going on."
"What's going on is that Rex has finally lost it. He deliberately attacked Providence agents and destroyed our base. Not to mention the fact he led a rebellion of EVOs against us. This isn't another teenage prank. These actions come with very real consequences. I think we might have to eliminate him."
"White Knight please before you do anything listen to what I have to say. I think I might have the answer to what was causing Rex to act like that. Sir, if you will just exam the data you'll see that Rex wasn't even conscious during his escape attempt."
"What are you talking about Holiday? I watched on my monitors. The kid seemed to be aware of what he was doing."
"Look at these two screens. The right screen is Rex's brain activity ten minutes prior to his surprise escape attempt. As you can see from these reading Rex has clearly entered his first R.E.M. cycle. From the rest of the bio riot he was having a pleasant dream. Then just six minutes later his brain activity changes. He starts emitting delta waves, commonly seen in adults with sleeping disorders. A person in this state of mind can act, talk and perform everyday tasks, but have no conscience memory or knowledge that their doing anything."
"Are you saying Rex was sleepwalking? A person does not just start sleepwalking without a reason Doc. What about Bobo and the rest of the EVOS. You can't tell me animals and plants sleepwalk," Six asked, skeptically eying the data.
"Normally not, but you were right that something else was causing them to sleepwalk. To an extent every living thing on these planet even plants has sleep cycle when their brain activity is reduced. During that time plants conserve energy for the next day and humans and animals dream to sort out problems and revitalize. Our hypersonic parable dish recorded a long distance infrasound specifically targeting EVOs. Once the EVO's heard this song they were put delta wave trance."
"Someone did this on purpose? We know one EVO who has the ability to call EVOs to her and uses sound as weapon," Six said.
"The kid's hottie crush Circe. Bobo remember how she broke the kid's heart when she chose the Pack. You think she's behind this?" Bobo questioned the guy in green.
"I initially thought that, but from all we know about her Circe's powers couldn't reach this far. Also the infra sound was rather strange. I had some of my colleagues isolated it and clean up from the static. After increasing the speed we finally were able to make out the message being sent. Have a listen," Holiday said tapping a few keys. A few seconds later a sweet female voice could be heard singing a song.
"Heart don't fail me now, courage don't desert me. Home, love, family.
There was once a time I must've had them too. Home, love, family
I will never be complete until I find you."
"What in the world was that awful piece of junk?" White Knight questioned. He was slowly losing his patience with Holiday and wanted to know where his weapon was and who took it now!
"I ran the song trough the database and found a match. It's from a movie called Anastasia. It's called Journey to the Past. The main character sings it when she's reminiscing about finding the truth about her past."
"You think this song was deliberately chosen because of the context and lyrics?"
"Yes Six. See these spikes were the singer reaches a high note? When Rex heard those high notes images encoded with the sound wave were downloaded directly into his cerebral cortex. From there it would be easy to manipulate his dreams and get Rex to leave. I found a similar, but different sound wave being directed at the rest of our EVOs. Their songs were giving them instructions on how to help Rex escape. As much as I like to blame Circe for this, she just doesn't have this ability. Unless her powers have evolved I don't see how she could have pulled something like this off."
"She would also need extensive knowledge on Providence defenses and what EVOs we have in stock. She doesn't have that knowledge, but the rest of the Pack might. The important questions are they doing this on their own or do they have a new leader. More importantly what do they want with Rex?"
"Whatever it is it can't be good for the rest of us. I'm assuming you can't trace that signal back Holiday otherwise you would have done so already right?" White Knight inquired. Holiday shook her head sadly. "Great. Alright I want all systems back up and running by 0600 hours. Holiday see if you can figure out a way to defend against this hypnosis. Six, you and your team start tracking Rex down. Until Rex is found he is priority one above all else including EVO attacks. We are going to find that kid if it's the last thing we do."
A day later Rex had finally reached his destination after several hours of flying. Although in his mind he had reached an Aztec pyramid in reality he was at the entrance way to Van Kleiss castle in Abysus. Pushing opening the doors he slowly walked towards the throne room guided by the song. The last few lyrics were heard as he came to stop in front of Van Kleiss's throne. There were several people standing there hidden in the shadow.
"One step at a time, one hope then another. Who knows where this road may go? Back to who I was, onto find my future. Things my heart still needs to know. Yes, let this be a sign. Let this road be mine. Let it lead me to my past. Courage see me through heart I trust in you and bring me home at last," Circe sang loudly before folding her mouth away. On her right someone began clapping loudly. Rex still didn't move or acknowledge anyone he just stood there still as a statue.
"Lovely song Circe I commend your talents as well as yours my dear Seven of Nine," Van Kleiss chuckled lightly as he descended from his throne. Circe and another woman who did greatly resemble Seven of Nine except her hair was brown, she wore a purple one piece suit, and her "implants covered her left arm to her elbow, right leg up to her knee, and her left eye was covered by metal and green data screen. She scowled at the nickname.
"I told you not to call me that! Don't make me regret downloading your brain into this new cloned body Shaka," the mysterious woman warned.
"Only if you call me by my last name Anya. You know what it doesn't matter because the first piece of the puzzle has finally arrived thanks to your efforts. Welcome home Rex. Welcome to Abysus son!" Van Kliess said placing a hand on the boy and laughing manically.
