Before we resume I just wanted to thank SplashSJQ and my other recent Guest reviewer for reminding me of my audience. I know where I'm going with this, I'm just not entirely sure at this point how to get there, so please bear with me guys. Thank you, and enjoy chapter four. ~ E.C.
Everything was orange. Not the same orange; that would have messed with Zoom's head; but everywhere he looked, every surface they passed, he could have said with little hesitation was one shade of orange or another. In some places it was so dark it was almost black, but always there was a subtle hint of ochre, that slightly burnt tinge that gave the place its colour.
"This is screwing up my depth perception," Lucinda muttered in front of him. He smirked.
"I mean, is that a door?" She continued. "It looks like a door. It's wide enough, tall enough, and why else would that square be a different colour to the rest? But man, I just can't tell. I feel like if I try and touch it it'll be like those fishbowl things they have at the science museum; you think you've found it and then your hand keeps on going and your brain starts doing backflips."
Despite the fact that he had no idea what she meant, Zoom couldn't help but laugh at the analogy. She turned around and told him to shush, her eyes twinkling.
They had left her bike as soon as they had crossed the portal into the Pathgral home world, an easy enough task given that the quantum flux tear was exactly where Sage had said it would be, and nothing had been waiting for them on the other side. They had emerged into an orange hallway, and that was where they had been ever since. Twenty minutes had passed; Zoom didn't want to be the one to admit they were lost.
"I'm serious, dude, anything at all that looks vaguely familiar would work a treat on me right now."
It was the third time Lucinda had said words to that effect in as many minutes.
"I don't know where we are, Luce," he finally admitted with a sigh. His ears burned with shame just thinking about it. What kind of a scout got lost on a recon mission? "Everything here looks the same to me."
She glanced back at him with one eyebrow raised sceptically.
"Yeah, I know," she stated slowly, as if it was plainly obvious. As if she hadn't thought it necessary to point out due to how obvious it was. Zoom blushed deeper.
"Hey, I don't blame you, what with everything being the same round here and all. I pride myself on a good sense of direction, and I'm just as lost as you are." She was silent for a moment while they carried on through all the orange. "Although, one good thing that's come of this," she soon continued, "is that we now know for a fact there's no way your friends are getting those cars of theirs through here. I don't think even my bike could take these corners at a crawl."
Zoom made a noise of agreement as he slowed and peered sideways around the next right-angle in front of them. He was still cautious, despite the fact that they hadn't met another living soul on their entire journey. If anything, that made him warier still; either they had been going in an uninhabited circle this whole time, or the Pathgral were watching their every move, waiting. He had no idea whether they knew that he and Lucinda were there or not. He hated not knowing, even more than he hated the idea of being watched.
"What'll Vert do if we don't make it back in time?" she asked, changing the subject even more suddenly than before. Zoom got the impression that she hated silence, although he didn't know whether he was annoyed or glad about that. He didn't answer. He didn't actually know. The team couldn't bring the vehicles through into the Pathgral world, and Vert would never risk the security of Earth by doing so, especially not even if it meant losing his family in the process. He would wait for them longer than he had said he would, and only think up a new plan when there was no other option.
Zoom slowed slightly and allowed Lucinda to take the lead. He admired her in many ways, this boisterous Southern biker girl with a sharp tongue and rapid-fire but defensive attitude. He was embarrassed to admit it to himself now that he knew her as well as he did, but when he had first heard her name he had begun to idolise her, and eventually his idolatry developed into a complete obsession with every minute detail of her life. He'd followed everything she'd done, watched every competition she entered; he'd even had a few posters of her on his walls back when he lived with the Order of the Flying Fist, much to Master Takyasu's annoyance. He silently vowed never to tell her about those. He had been what anyone might easily call a Fanboy - the one time he actually went to a show she'd entered, he thought he might die from the sheer excitement and the fact that he, in the front row, was only three feet away from her as she blazed through the circuit. Back then she'd had a kind of determination that had left him in awe after every event he'd watched, and he liked to think that it was what inspired him never to give up on even the toughest of Battle Force Five missions.
Ever since Ronnie Wheeler had mentioned that she knew Lucinda, Zoom had begun to hope that he might meet her one day, and had started toning down his obsession accordingly. Still, he had ever even imagined that he would be sneaking through the hallways of an alien world with her. He didn't actually want her to be there with him - he had always tried to keep his two worlds separate, to make sure that the Battle Force Five never interacted with anything he had known before. He really should have accepted when Zen first turned up all those years ago that it wasn't going to work out that way. When they were back at the Hub, at least, he could let his inner fanboy loose just a little. Out here, he had to keep it reined in.
"Hey, wait a sec..." Lucinda muttered, dragging him out of his thoughts before he walked into the arm she had held up to stop him. "Hear that?"
Zoom froze, not letting even the merest rustle of fabric interrupt him as he strained to listen.
"I swear I heard footsteps," she whispered. "As in, not ours."
"Shh..." Zoom held up a finger. If there were other footsteps, then they were no longer alone. Although, he couldn't hear...
A dull thud echoed across to them from behind a wall.
"Run!" Zoom yelled, and grabbed Lucinda's arm before tearing off around the corner ahead.
"Where are we going?" She demanded.
"Anywhere away from here," he returned, although in truth he had no idea. He would have loved to say with confidence that they were heading back towards the portal that had brought them there, but neither of them knew where that was anymore. He just let his instincts kick in, and went wherever his feet took him. Only when he was sure that Lucinda could keep up did he dare let go of her arm.
Corner after corner, hallway after hallway he took at speed, running faster than he had ever run in his life to get away from... What? He didn't know. Whatever had made that deep booming sound might not even be following them, but he didn't want to take that chance. Unknown threats were even worse to him than the most evil of Zurk, Red Sentient or Vandal - at least he knew those enemies. At least he could predict and out think them. These, the Pathgral... He had nothing on them. And if he had nothing, he couldn't fight them. The only thing left was flight.
They careened around another corner and skidded to an abrupt halt.
"Which way now?" Lucinda panted, leaning over on her knees as she sucked in deep gulps of air. Zoom turned on his heels, staring wildly down both pathways before them, aware of the burning in his own lungs but studiously ignoring it until he had figured out the more pressing problem. It was one of the first lessons Master Takyasu had ever taught him.
"This way," Lucinda decided. She strode down the left-hand path without looking back, moving fast but not quite committing to a proper run so soon after their initial flight. Zoom frowned as he followed.
"Why?"
"Why not?" she shrugged. "Until we choose one to go down they're both right, and both wrong. It's like Schrodinger's Cat, but with hallways."
"I never got that," Zoom confessed, marvelling at the lightness of their conversation while they were running for their lives. "I always thought it was just scientists refusing to admit that they don't know the answer to something."
Lucinda laughed then, a loud and genuine eruption that seemed to be unleashed from her throat as she tossed her head back and allowed the emotion to crinkle her eyes. It was the most open he had ever seen her and he found himself laughing along, childishly pleased that he had made her laugh like that with such a simple comment.
Until the world exploded.
A deep boom was all Zoom heard before something knocked them both off their feet and sent them flying through the corridor, turning everything into a spiralling mass of blurred orange and pain. They sprawled on the floor together in a tangle of limbs; Zoom's fingers tingled and he couldn't quite feel his feet as he blinked to clear the knockout haze from his vision.
Three tall figures approached through the dust. Clad all in black, moving slowly, almost gliding over the rubble-strewn ground, they reminded Zoom of the Jedi from Star Wars - their legs were totally obscured by long robes; if they even had what he would know as legs; and arms folded together at the front inside voluminous sleeves; if they even had what he would know as arms. Fear gripped him and all he could do was stare. They were only about ten feet away from him when he remembered Lucinda, remembered home, remembered to run. He cast his eyes about wildly for her, trying to find a glimpse of black in the field of orange and grey before him. The figures were still closing in.
He found her. She lay almost peacefully where the blast had thrown her up against the far wall of another T-junction in the hallway, still unconscious and totally unaware of the goings-on around her. He hauled her into his arms; there was no time to try and wake her. The looming figures of the Pathgral were nearly upon them now, still moving at half a walking pace despite Zoom's hurried movements. Maybe they knew there was nowhere for him to run. He pushed that thought out of his mind.
Lucinda was too heavy for him but he forced himself to stumble on. He chose the right-hand path, dimly aware of a throbbing pain in his head as well as half a dozen other places. His shock suit had allowed him to forget over the years what being thrown into a wall at high velocity really felt like. Blindly he turned them around corner after corner, down hallway after hallway, constantly aware of his robed pursuers behind him at every step. Tears welled up in his eyes; he was never going to find the way back home.
Just as that and other despairing thoughts crossed his mind he saw it: the hulking frame of Lucinda's bike, gleaming in the artificial light like a beacon of hope. He almost shouted with joy. He perched Lucinda on the saddle and sat behind her, holding her with one arm and hoping against hope that she wouldn't fall off. He powered up the bike, kicked up the stand, and risked one last glance back at his followers before turning and speeding through the swirling portal just ahead.
In the darkness he left behind a pair of eyes burned like flames, piercing the hooded shadows with rage and hate.
"I must sincerely apologise for my actions," Tromp declared, his voice forlorn. If Tezz had turned to look, he would have seen his friend staring at the floor and wringing his metal hands, risking the occasional glance at Tezz's back.
"That is unnecessary," Tezz sighed. "It was not your fault, Tromp."
It was the fifteenth time he had said those words in the twenty minutes since the Hub's power had been restored and he had been able to recharge Tromp's main unit.
"I will not connect my circuits to the Hub again," the Kharamanos declared. "It was because of my recklessness that the Pathgral were able to overload your systems, and thus place your teammates in danger."
Tezz stifled a groan. It would, actually, be incredibly useful if Tromp would connect himself back up to the Hub, because that way they could make significant headway in their task to sift through every inch of the Sentient data logs they possessed in order to look for something that might be of use against their new enemy. As it was, all seven remaining members of the Battle Force Five were reading through various areas, but in the ten minutes it had been since they had begun, they had covered less than one per cent of their data collection. Tromp's refusal to assist was, in Tezz's mind, irrational to the point of becoming irritating. He was a scientist; results before risk was the code they all lived by.
For the first time that he could recall, Tezz wished that the Hub's computers came with chairs.
"Hey, Vert," Agura called from across the room. Their leader didn't even look up from his screen.
"Hmm?"
"The perimeter motion sensors have been activated."
"Zoom and Lucinda?"
"I'm not sure. It's moving too fast to stay in range of our cameras."
"I didn't think earth technology was capable of doing that," Sherman muttered.
"Something's wrong." Vert crossed to Agura's station and watched over her shoulder as black streaks whizzed almost indistinguishably across the screen, disappearing from one camera feed just nanoseconds before appearing again on another.
"If it's them," Agura corrected him. "We don't know anything yet."
Tezz grit his teeth and stifled the anger that rose within him; of course it was Zoom and Lucinda, who else would know the exact trajectory at which to approach their underground tunnels? Vert and Sherman were right - Luce's bike couldn't safely maintain the speeds it was achieving, and therefore simple data analysis showed that they had to have a reason for forcing it. Agura was only trying to keep Vert calm, he understood that. But he had been slipping back into his old way of thinking of late; the one that detested anyone who ignored the plain obviousness of the facts before them.
Vert met his eye across the Hub, and Tezz knew that he was thinking exactly the same thing.
"Open the tunnels," he ordered, and Tezz willingly obliged. Moments later the fierce, guttural echoes of motorcycle exhaust filled the chamber.
Nobody moved as the sleek black bike screeched to a halt in a cloud of smoke and desert dust, creating a surreal bubble of stillness that seemed to last significantly longer than it actually did. Zoom only needed to utter the first vague syllables of a cry for help before everyone sprinted into action; the sight of him struggling to keep Lucinda's inert form upright on the saddle was more than enough. AJ was the first to his side, scooping the peacefully unconscious girl into his arms and carrying her swiftly but gently through the Hub and out into the corridor that led to the medical bay, filling Tezz with a sense of Déjà vu that he couldn't explain or pin down to any particular memory. The rest of the team dispersed, either following him or vanishing in different directions for other useful pieces of equipment until only Vert, Tezz and Zoom were left in the silent Hub.
"I'm sorry..." Zoom barely whispered, before sitting heavily down on a table and burying his face in his hands. His bare skin was covered in bruises and cuts, his clothes were dirty and his eyes were red, the remains of tears staining the dirt on his face. He smelt of smoke and sweat.
"What happened?" Vert asked, gently but with enough authority to bring Zoom out of himself, if only for a moment.
"We were going round in circles," he explained. "Everything was the same, and totally empty, until... I don't even know what happened."
Tezz glanced at Vert, catching his tightly clenched jaw and the anger in his eyes as they waited for Zoom to continue.
"There was an explosion, and three of them came at us... I... I just grabbed Luce and ran. We didn't find anything, I'm sorry..."
Tezz retreated back to the computer as Zoom broke down into tears and sobs racked his body. Suddenly the wall of text in front of him meant nothing, just symbols on a screen far away in another reality that had nothing whatsoever to do with him. They'd spent forty minutes on the Pathgral planet, and they had found nothing. Tezz knew that Zoom was good at what he did, that almost nothing had slipped past him before on any mission the two had shared. By all accounts that was good enough reason to assume that there was nothing there to find. Sage had said that all the Sentients the Pathgral had abducted were returned to them dead...
Tezz clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut. He had to get a grip on himself. If he gave up now, if he allowed fear to overwhelm him, he would lose any chance he had of finding Ronnie. He knew that; he just had to make sure he saw it through to the end. When all evidence pointed faultlessly to what he feared the most, then and only then would he allow himself to mourn.
His eyes snapped back up to the main computer screen as with renewed determination he began sifting through the Sentient files before him, ruling out any section for which holding any answers was an impossibility. At least he could narrow down his search parameters.
Ronnie Wheeler woke in total oppressive darkness. The air around her was still and cold, yet she could feel the closeness of something surrounding her on all sides. She stretched out a shaking hand ahead of her, already fearing what she would find.
Her fingers touched solid metal, ice cold under her skin. She had only half a meter in which to move in any direction, and in the darkness she had no idea where she was. At first she screamed, slamming her hands against the walls of her prison with all her might, unaware in her panic that tears were streaming down her cheeks. As her energy failed she sank down into a sobbing ball at the base of her cage and curled her arms around her knees. As her strength abandoned her, her mind raced.
How much time had passed since she'd been brought to wherever she was? Did anyone know she was missing? Was anyone looking for her? She jumped to all kinds of conclusions based on Sentients, aliens of unknown descriptions, and the desolation she had witnessed on her few trips into Battlezones.
Was she going to die?
She shivered in the cold of her entrapment and cried into her knees at the thought of dying alone in an alien and empty world.
