Here is gpshaws bit! It might be a bit long… but hopefully it was worth the wait…
Chapter By Gpshaw
Erik
Aaron and I walked through the halls. Being careful to obey the rules. We came to the area with the prison and saw Tobias standing just outside the door.
"Hey" I said. He just stared at me. "Can I ask you some questions?" he looked like he'd rather deck himself but said,
"Got nothin better to do"
"Where are we?"
"You're in the catacombs of course. This one of the last safe places left in the world. Its that way because Jerry and Amanda rigged the entrance with Kandrona radiation detectors and wall mines. Plus the place looks dilapidated from the outside so they don't think we could survive in here. Occasionally, for those who still believe, we have Mass sometimes, but only when they're not hovering right outside"
"Uh… why?"
"Well… religion was abandoned by most people, but… your counterpart managed to get together a large group of Catholics into a platoon to fight the Yeerks. He led them into a nasty fight and… well… over 75 percent of them died. To some people, you were a saint, but to the realists here… well, let's just say some of us wouldn't have been afraid to kill you if you'd survived. Some might still… even if you're from another universe"
"Look not to change the subject but… if these are catacombs… there are… remains… here"
"Yeah. Most of the people that died we never got a chance to bury… stupid Yeerks…"
"Can I… see them?"
"Knock yourself out. Take your next left and then to the right… you'll come right to the grave entrance. And uh… watch where you step too… cause we had to get rid of a few of the old graves here so… yeah" I parted from Aaron who went somewhere else, following Tobias's directions and came to the entrance of the grave area.
Tobias didn't lie. I had to step around skulls and hands, some with rotting skin still attached… the smell was overpowering…
The actual areas where the bodies were looked like small caverns where bodies were inserted into. Some areas still had actual bodies in them covered in a sheet of glass. However, most of the bodies had been removed and in their place was an assortment of electronic equipment most of which I couldn't tell its function. Almost all of them looked like those old fashioned car radios, they also had rows of coloured lights and buttons as well as what seemed to be some kind of meter to measure some kind of energy.
Over one of the machines was a sign that said FF mgt. Further down I saw a man fiddling with some of it. I walked closer and heard him murmuring to himself.
"Cross left wire to the right outlet and that should…" There was a burst of sparks form the area he was at "Goddamn it!" The man yelled and kicked at the area as hard as he could. I was surprised he didn't break his foot. He turned around and saw me… and then I recognised him.
He had a dracon beam on me in a heartbeat.
"Goul!" he said "I want you to slowly raise your arms above your head and get on your knees"
"Jerry" I said, barely recognising him, he had lost a lot of weight. I put up my hands "It's me, its Erik… ok"
"I'll see about that" he said and he lifted up his left arm (which had been hidden from me behind a small outcropping of rock) I saw that it was not a real arm, it was cold metal. I could see wiring where the opening in the bones would be and I noticed there was looked like small oxygen tanks on both sides. He pressed some buttons that were somewhere near the wrist. A beam of light shot into my ear. I was ready for the burst of pain but then…
"Holy shit Erik!" he embraced me. The arm was cold.
"Wait. Now you believe me? Why?"
"I did a scan of your inner ear… I found the implants"
"Oh" all members of my team were outfitted with implants in their ears. They were designed by my parents (who were killed by the Yeerks because of it) to help Anna and I with our deafness. It had a good side-effect too; it made ear canals to small for infestation. I spent the next ten minutes explaining what happened to me and how I got here. Jerry looked angry.
"Idiots couldn't have come here and told me about it, I'm fixing their force-fields and working non-stop and…" there was a shower of sparks.
"Shit!" he screamed and ran over to one of the electrical doohickys and started working on it.
"Hey, what happened to your arm? Doesn't it come back when you morph?" I asked. Jerry spoke to me over banging on whatever it was, I don't know but when you talked to Jerry while he worked he did the job faster.
"Special kind of technology, lost my arm in battle, passed out and the guys attached this in surgery, they didn't know I could morph, by the time I came to the wound had healed into the machine, it's a part of my DNA now" Another shower hit "Dammit" he brought his arm up and talked into his palm.
"Jade I'm taking down the force-field in quadrant IV. I'm gonna havta check out the circuiting. I suggest you send someone there to watch it"
"We don't have anyone to spare! Some smartass knocked a lamp over, and now were fighting a blaze down here!" I heard Jade, the Jade from this universe, snap.
"Then send the new guys cause if that stays on much longer it's gonna overload and the whole place is going to be blown to kingdom come" Jerry hit the terminal or whatever it was. I got the impression that our conversation was over and kept walking.
The equipment stuffed into the caverns changed to some sort of targeting system it looked like. Further down there were several monitors and a security guard watching them. All around there were bones scattered. It looked like the equipment was installed in a hurry and I saw further down that the wires were hanging out of a crack in the wall and most of them were sparking.
Suddenly I walked into another area. This time there was no equipment and the caverns were larger. The bodies were all covered by a sheet of glass and had a dull light shining on them. There was a death date and a cause of death on each. I walked by some guy named Edgar Boone; killed by sniper fire, Delavan Banes ;land mine…
I soon came to what I was looking for and my heart broke. Karen Bishop; poisoning. Her body brought it home. Her wonderful long black hair, her eyes closed and her pretty face She looked like she was asleep. I found out later that she would always look like that due to some new kind of embalming fluid. Then I saw another grave, this girl had long blond hair… she looked a lot like Rachel.
Amy Love; suicide. Another coffin down and I fell to my knees. A shorter girl with long red hair and cute freckles. Becky Thornton; killed when her lines were overran while she called for a napalm strike, she succeeded, this body recreated via holographic technology. So many were dead… we had lost so many lost people.
I walked out in a daze scooting past as Jerry swore at the machines.
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Third persons POV.
Jerry kept trying to find a way to fix the force-field generator. It wasn't easy. There always seemed to be something wrong. He crossed a few wires and uncrossed a few more, then he powered up the system. The lights went off and the voltage indicator went immediately to red, causing another shower of sparks. Some of the current went up his arm and cause it to move erratically for a minute.
"Shit!" he yelled, turning it off. He wasn't made for this stuff. He was a hacker not an electrician, and Amanda was off repairing something else so she wasn't any help. He and Amanda had designed all the security features. He was proud of them but didn't have much time to update them. A lot of his facial recognition features that were in use in the other colonies had fallen into disrepair and Ghouls, Yeerks that morphed dead members of the resistance, were getting in with increasing frequency.
Jerry was still shocked by the recent events, he had heard of the multi-verse theory, about lots of other universes existing separate to this one, but he didn't put much faith in it. He had always hoped that Erik was still alive, after all they had never found his body, and Robert's word wasn't something that Jerry was ready to trust just yet.
He tried to tighten a few more screws and reroute more power to other areas. Turning on the juice sent more sparks and one of the lights blew, two of the wires running into the system melted.
"Crap!" Jerry muttered. Now he'd have to remove it and take it back to his room to repair those wires, on the bright side maybe he could set it up so…
"How are things Jerry?"
"Ah crap! You scared the living daylights out of me!" Jerry said turning around to face him holding the transmitter.
"So, I hear you've met one of our new friends"
"Yeah, I heard about Jade II. When exactly were you planning on telling me all this?"
"Don't get crappy with me. It's been hell the last few days and I haven't been able to reach you. Look, I've been meaning to ask… about our new visitors…"
"What about them?"
"I need you to find out all you can about them. I want to know if they're a threat or not. With your computer knowledge"
"You want me to watch them through the computers don't you?"
"Yeah, just like the others" Jerry tucked the transmitter under his robot arm and sighed.
"I'll do it"
"Great" Jerry walked off.
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Erik
Guard duty.
These jerks had locked us up for a few days and then stick some kind of object in our ear, tell us hope is almost lost and then they put us on guard duty. I wasn't the only one griping. Jade and I were on the first watch and she was murmuring under her breath.
We were pacing back and forth in front of an entrance to the caverns we were in (I had learned that most of this cave had been added on with dracon beam fire) it was an area that couldn't be protected by a force field. I got fed up with pacing and sighed, sitting down for a moment. Jade came over and sat next to me.
I hadn't had a chance to get a good look at her. She had a very pretty face. I thought I detected an air of French in her. She had weird green eyes and chestnut brown hair. She also came up to a little higher than my breastbone.
"So, how are you liking this world?" she muttered.
"Uh… I hate it. My girlfriend/ wife is dead, and so are half my team-mates"
"And mine are psycho dudes"
"Might want to be careful what you say" I said pointing to one of the holes that would generate the force-field but as now (I thought) being used to spy on us.
"You mean they're watching us?"
"Peeves me off too. Didn't the get enough of that when they had us locked up like rodents"
"I guess not. Wait, how long did you know…"
"Jerry taught me that kind of stuff, if you're lucky you'll meet him, he seems to be pretty unchanged by this world but he does seem to be more… I don't know… melancholy"
"So Jerry is like an expert at spying"
"Well actually he was a hacker when he was on my team, damn good one too, but his knowledge of computers could spill over to anything. I remember one time he was able to somehow track his older brothers surfing habits and used them for blackmail"
"So he's a good spy too?"
"Let me put it this way: I'd keep my underwear on when I changed for a while" Jade gave a snort but smiled anyway. Her smile was a lot like Karens, I saw Karens face and it guess it reflected in my own face.
"What's wrong" She asked then seemed to realise it "Karen"
"I can't really believe she's gone" I said "I hope I can find some way back because I don't want to live in a world without her" I tried to fight it back but a tear fell down my cheek. Jade wiped it away gently.
"You'll find a way back. I know it. This world can't be where we're stuck" She kissed me gently on the forehead as she got up, which I enjoyed a little more than a mourning man should. When our relief came it was late and I went directly to my cot. I was asleep with in minutes.
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I feel sooo mean for cutting so much out of gpshaws… but it was just too long! (and it would drive me insane if I was here any longer)
But if anyone wants the original one from gpshaws, just ask and I'll email it to you, k?
BYE!