Part 2: The Last Resort
White, sterile blankness engulfed Zillah as she opened her eyes. She blinked several times until her eyes adjusted to the blinding whiteness. She sat up. Slowly, she reached a long white hand up and removed a slim hairband. Long, shimmering white hair cascaded down to her shoulders.
Slowly, Zillah got out of her large, comfortable bed. The scene was that of pure white. White walls. White floor. White ceiling. White bedposts. White mattress. White sheets. White pillow. White dresser. And then of course, there was Zillah. White nightgown. White hair. White skin, which included long white legs, slender white arms, delicate white hands, and a beautiful white face. The only color in the room was the burning, deep crimson, ruby red eyes.
Zillah crossed the room, but she moved so delicately and flowingly that, to the casual observer, she appeared to be gliding. Reaching out, she pressed her hand into a seemingly empty, white expanse of wall. She drew her hand back, but a yellow, glowing, phantom image of her handprint was still burning on the wall. Then, a soft, relaxing bell toll sounded, and the wall appeared to vanish. But the wall had not vanished.
To Zillah's trained eye, she could see the minuscule shimmers that cascaded off the veil of water molecules. The wall had not so much vanished as it had partially evaporated. And as Zillah stepped through the gap, she could feel a soft, almost unnoticeable spray.
When Zillah stepped out into a long corridor, the soft bells tolled once again. Gazing behind her, Zillah saw the wall reappear. This was a process known as a small scale H20 Scoop, a process the Judoon had recently perfected. Only, on this side, the wall was not blank. A word, glowing the same gold that her handprint had when she had touched it from her room, was burning on it. "PHANTASMA".
Zillah turned and took in a deep breath as she stared down the long, seemingly endless white corridors. Similar words burnt down the wall, sparingly because behind each word, a room was concealed. Although, at this moment, the inhabitants of those rooms were empty.
In the decades that she had lived in this building, growing up through her childhood, adolescence, and now into her early adulthood, Zillah had almost always been the first to wake up. Slowly, she began to walk down the corridor.
After a few minutes she could see the great archway that marked the exit of the living quarters and the entrance to the main building. She glanced up at the wall and saw the word "GELTH" burning on the wall. Zillah smiled, because this was her best friends room.
Suddenly, the white of the corridor turned red. Alarms began to blare. And all around Zillah, pieces of the walls evaporated.
Zillah watched, as before her eyes, the "GELTH" word vanished and the wall before her evaporated. Only it didn't just evaporate, it was extinguished. In stead of the usual temporary veil of water particles, the wall before her burst into a wall of water, and that in turn burst into pure steam.
Without thinking, Zillah ran into the now open room in front of her. She raced over to the white bed that was identical to her own. Inside, a boy was groggily coming to. He sat up, and stared skeptically at Zillah, as if he didn't believe that she was actually there. "Zillah?" The boy murmured groggily. "What in the hell…"
"I DON'T KNOW, YMIR! JUST GET UP!" Panic of the unknown slowly crept into Zillah, and began to eat away at her as she implored her best friend to get moving. "PLEASE!"
Removing the sheets, the Gelth boy and best friend of Zillah, Ymir, jumped out of bed.
Ymir was short, only about 4 feet tall, and incredibly skinny. He wore a deep blue robe the rippled like water. It was made of a special material that all Gelth had apparently worn before the war, and it was supposedly in tune to their emotions. According to legend, when a Gelth completely achieved adulthood, their matured pure emotions were strong enough to become physical., though Ymir had not yet reached that point. The robe had a hood that went up over his head. His eyes burnt a bright light blue and he had no pupils or irises.
Zillah grabbed her friend's small hand. As they whipped around and charged forward, light filled the air in front of them. From that light a gigantic, helmeted Judoon materialized. He charged at them. Zillah screamed.
A strange ripple occurred, seeming to displace Zillah. She could no longer see anything, nor could she feel Ymir's hand in hers. She probed with her psychic mental power, but could feel no presense from anyone, not even herself. Time seemed unexistant. But, simultaneous and parallel with all of these feeling, the world flooded back to Zillah. She felt Ymir's hand locked tightly in hers. And she felt the thick arms of the Judoon engulfing them both. They had teleported.
They were in the huge, Main Atrium of the building. It was the size of several football fields and the pristine white ceiling was dome shaped. She was surrounded by an uncountable number of young adults, each and every one distinguishable as its own race. More races, colors, furs, wings, tentacles, and young adults of every shape and size appeared, as they were teleported into the room by their Judoon escorts. And all around them, up on a higher balcony that encircled the room, leaning against the railings, were Judoon.
The sight still took Zillah's breath away, just as it had when she had first arrived. This was it. The full extant of the Last Resort plan. The mercenary Judoon had saved one child of every highly intelligent race, a race that had been wiped out by the war.
The alarms suddenly stopped, and silence fell across the vast atrium. One of the Judoon removed his helmet, revealing a huge rhinoceros head. "SHIELDS DOWN!"
People began to gasp and scream. Zillah just listened in horror as she could hear the shields surrounding the room and base, the only things protecting them from the outside world, from the war deactivate.
"H20 SCOOP THE ROTUNDA!"
More screams came to this order as the walls and roof surrounding them evaporated. Then came the gasps of surprise. Then came the gasps of joy. Then came the gasps of excitement.
Zillah breathed in the fresh air, realizing she had not been outside for as long as she could remember. And then she to gasped. For instead of the smoke and flames and death that they had heard awaited any of them who dared to go outside, she saw only a beautiful day.
The sky was bright blue and vast fields of grain, grass, and flowers surrounded them. Zillah realized how ignorant she had been. She had always assumed that they were on a large spacecraft.
The Judoon's growl echoed around them once again. Only this time, even that growl had a hint of rejoicing in it.
"THE LAST GREAT TIME WAR," The voice announced triumphantly. "IS OVER!"
Deafening cheers split across the entire audience that now engulfed a large section of these new fields. Zillah did not join them. She was to busy gazing around at the alien landscape that surrounded her.
Suddenly, it struck her. An awed expression crossed Zillah's face as realization dawned on her. The Last Resort was more than just a plan.
The Last Resort was a Planet.