-This is still part of the final... even if the chapter´s name is different. :D-
The jungle wasn´t so quiet anymore. But after a plane crashed through the trees it was at least explainable why the calmness wasn´t there anymore. The burning wreck lay spread over a strip of cleared woodland. And a single silhouette rose from the burning wreckage around it.
Like an outcry of life in a silent field of death the figure walked over burning pieces and dead bodies. It was enveloped with smoke and dust. Persistently the silhouette strode its way out of the wreck. A gust of wind blew away the smoke and revealed a burned hurt dog which fur was black from the soot.
Without showing a sign of emotion Dudley stepped out of the fire and took the map out. After he oriented he put the map away and went silent through the underbrush. Even if there was a clearly drawn way on the map Dudley preferred to walk as the crow flies.
That was much faster and so he arrived after a few minutes footslog in front of simple stone entrance which was wound by big tendrils. The entrance wasn´t big, actually it was really small. If you don´t know exactly that it is there you wouldn´t find it. Dudley didn´t hesitate and got into the old ruin.
The inner was as unprepossessing as the outer. Just a little dusty cube shaped room. No inscription on the wall, no statues with nasty expressions, no traps… nothing that you would expect in some kind of old temple ruin. Dudley walked directly in the middle of the room and waited for something to happen.
"I don´t have time for this waiting shit!" he yelled into the emptiness.
"You better turn around and go back. Nothing to find here." A voice was heard from the ceiling.
"No no no! You damn creepy voice! Do you even know how many of your kind I´ve heard before?! Believe me creepy voices don´t scare me anymore!"
"Turn around and go back!" it repeated.
"NO! Do you even listen to me?! I have bled enough! I won´t turn around! UNDERSTOOD!"
"Then pass." The earth was quaking while the wall in front of Dudley sank into the ground and opened another giant chamber.
He wanted to tramp into the room and almost fell down. A giant bottomless pit extended over the whole room. Dudley hadn´t recognized it not until he passed the threshold to this chamber. Above the abyss three giant stone rings hovered.
"Just pass the chamber." The voice echoed through the room. It didn´t escape Dudley´s notice that the voice sounded a bit maliciously.
"Just… just pass the chamber?" Dudley sighed. "Well first see how deep this is."
He picked up a stone from the ground and threw it down into the pit. Now something strange happened. Instead of falling down the stone flew up towards the ceiling.
"What?!" he asked himself unbelieving.
He took another stone and wanted to throw it on one of the rings but something similar happened. The stone flew into the other direction. Dudley had to rethink his strategy. Something was wrong with the gravity in here.
"Go home gravity, you´re drunk" he laughed as he picked up another stone.
"Did you think about the fact that in this case something is wrong with you not with the gravity?" retorted the voice suddenly.
"I haven´t talked to YOU" Dudley took the stone and threw it this time to the opposite direction of the rings. Like he expected, the stone flew towards rings. As it passed the first ring the stone became faster. It passed the second ring and the same happened.
And so with the third ring. These rings must accelerate everything what flew through them.
"Oh great. Well then…" Dudley turned away from the pit took a step run-up and jumped. It felt really strange to get pulled into the opposite direction if you jumped into the other.
With a skillful move from the hip he made it to turn around and saw how he passed the first ring. The acceleration he felt was like the moment when you sit in a plain while it is accelerating on the runway. In the second ring it felt like he was pressed into seat of the T.U.F.F. shuttle while it was starting.
And what happened in the third ring wasn´t describable with anything normal anymore. But a positron must feel like that in a hadron collider. The wall on the other side of the room disappeared like the last one and opened a new chamber. Dudley flew into that room, fell on his face and slid on it a few meters until he stopped.
"Ouch…" was Dudley´s only comment to that.
"Honey, what are you doing on the ground?" a soft known voice whispered to Dudley. He gazed into the smiling face of Kitty that kneed beside him.
"Kitty, what are you doing here?!" Dudley was perplex. From where did she come?
"Oh Dudley, you and your strange questions." Kitty helped him up and sat him on a soft luxury armchair. More perplex Dudley gazed around in the room in which he was.
It looked like the old Miller mansion, a building he usually knew as a run-down ruin, was in a perfect condition. Someone must have renovated the building… or better, someone demolished that barn of a place and rebuilt it.
"Daddy!" three little children ran towards Dudley and jumped onto his laps. "Tell us a story!" the children begged.
"What is going here?!" Dudley stared at the three little children that must have been his own.
Sarah was among them and two other kids he haven´t seen before. But everything felt so familiar, so real.
"You promised them to read for them." Called Kitty from another room.
Dudley took the book that one of his three children held under his nose and began to read.
"Day 1000 after the Sullivan incident. I usually would be cheerful and dance because that guy is dead but I lost a friend today. I never expected that Phil would be such a…" Dudley looked up from the book. This was his diary. But why had this child the diary, it was in his pocket.
"What is going on… I have no… What the he…" Before Dudley could finish his last thought the whole room changed. Suddenly he was in a wet dark cellar.
His eyes slowly got used to the darkness and then he saw Kitty. He wanted to walk towards her but he realized that his leg was chained in a big chain which was attached to the wall.
"Dudley help us!" Kitty cried. With her hands and feet she was chained to the wall.
Beside her, and also chained to the wall, was Sarah who didn´t make any noise. She must have been too intimidated.
"Hello." Over a speaker in the room the ugly noise rang out. "Mr. Puppy, it is time for you to make an important decision."
"Let them go you sick bastard!"
"What happen to them depends on what you decide. Look in your pocket, you will find something there." The voice ordered.
Dudley touched the outer side of the pocket and realized what was in there.
"It is your gun… Anyway, do you see the necklaces around their throats?"
Dudley checked that, it was true. Sarah as well as Kitty worn bulging iron collars.
"Believe me, they are not only for decoration. They are detonation collars which are connected to a heartbeat-sensor. When the heartbeat of one of them stops, the necklaces will unlock and release all of you. Well no matter what you will do. You will walk out of here… with one of them… But don´t wait too long. Or they both going to die! Hahaha…" The voice felt silent and Dudley stared towards the speaker.
Was that a dream? Or even real? Dealing with the advisor made him changing his whole attitude to reality. But nevertheless, did that thing really wanted him to do what he thought that he should do? Should he really kill Kitty or Sarah to save one of them? He couldn´t do that. He just couldn´t do that. But if he would hesitate…
"Daddy, help!" Sarah finally shouted.
"What should I do? I have to…" Dudley tried to come off the chain and help them but he just stumbled and fell down. Desperately he dragged on the chain while he lay on the ground. It was useless.
"Okay, okay… let´s try to think." Dudley sat up. "Sarah is my daughter, I would do anything to safe her. I love her. Kitty is the love of my life. Of course I also love her and she is pregnant and… DAMN!" He realized that he had to make a decision to safe at least one of them.
His right hand glided down to his pocket and pulled out the gun. He stood up and pointed it towards the wall on which Kitty and Sarah hung. Dudley looked down at his feet. No matter if he shoots Kitty or Sarah he wouldn´t look in their eyes. He pointed still in the space between them.
His arms were still undecided if they should push the gun to the left or to the right. His eyes scanned the ground and trying to find something with that he could get out of this misery. They stopped at his chain. The iron that surrounded his leg keeping him near the wall… could it be?
Dudley looked up from the ground smiling.
"Well. It seems I have to make a decision. And it is easier than I had expected." Dudley put the gun on his head. "Kitty, Sarah close your eyes." He said softly and pulled the trigger. But instead of the usual bang of the propelling charge that speeded up the bullet and the supersonic bang that go hand in hand with the first one the room around him changed again to a completely white sterile room.
The gun disappeared out of his hand. Also his clothes had changed. He wore a white monk´s robe, in its shape very similar to the one their enemy wore.
"Okay enough! What is going on her?!"
A sarcastic clapping made Dudley spun around. Behind him stood Sam and clapped his hands smiling evilly. At least Dudley thought it was Sam because his whole posture was different. He stood there hunched and somehow less self-confident.
"The hero´s destiny is the self-sacrifice." Sam offered Dudley his hand.
"What are you talking about? We know each other, Sam! And where the hell am I?"
"Sam? That is how you call me? Well actually my name is Isaac, nice to meet you. And you are here in Pi Omicron Lambda 13. A research facility of my people. It was left after we developed to a higher form of existence."
Dudley stared at him confused and Isaac sighed. "I know that you have many questions… and all of them should be answered now. Really all of them."
"Okay then… first what am I supposed to get her?"
"Easy, me!"
"You?" probed Dudley.
"Yes, me… Let me explain you that. I am not the one you call Sam. I am something that he wants to forget. A part of his memory, a manifestation of feelings that he try to suppress and a part of himself of course." Five years ago Dudley would be surprised by something like that but after all he has been through nothing weird would surprise him anymore. So he just nodded about that and enquired.
"What memories?"
Isaac gave him a bitter laugh. "Well, memories about a time in which we humans still were spread all around the universe…"
"Humans? Is that the name of your species?"
"I forgot I have not told you yet, have I? The connection to myself is strange… even if I usually receive anything… but I cannot send… and I sometimes forget things… I am getting old. But believe me, the last days I was very tuned. Anyway yes, we called us selves humans. Well, I or better Sam worked here in this facility. We tried to establish how fauna from our home planet react if we expose them to a new kind of radiation."
"Fauna from your home planet?" Dudley asked that because he didn´t know the term fauna.
"Yes. Cats, dogs, hamsters and so on and so forth. Well of course we haven't just taken animals here. We took their DNA and placed it here. Then we waited. But just 10000 years after we placed it here we developed… Stupid thing but that hadn´t stopped me from watching this planet, I mean this whole Pi Omicron Lambda 13 mission was my idea…"
"Wait wait wait…" interjected Dudley. "Do you mean that our whole existence was the result of an experiment?!" That explains much to Dudley. For example the dog he saw in Sam´s memory… maybe a part of the DNA of this species was part of his own?
"Yep, that is right." confirmed Isaac. "But back to the main subject. I lived here with woman called Julia who was also a brilliant scientist -of course not as brilliant as me- we always had our fights but basically we were okay. Maybe not friends, especially not after the little so called prank played on me, but okay. And there was another woman called Melissa. She was the gofer. She maintained the whole station, from cooking to repairing the force field generators she did everything… And she was kind of cute, I have to admit."
Isaac had a light smile on his lips and seemed to remember something.
"She was still a girl when she was allocated to my team. And she had an unbelievable potential. But kids and especially teenagers… she somehow… you know… fell in love with me."
"Oh how cute." Mocked Dudley.
"Ah shut up! What do you know?"
"Enough, believe me. But did you took the chance?"
"God no!" replied Isaac outraged "I´m not a monster that is making out with little girls! I refused and that somehow broke her heart…"
"So what? You all developed! You should be above such things!" a certain incomprehension was in lay Dudley´s voice.
"Some things you never forget no matter how developed you are…"
"Well anyway, if it´s you who I should get then come on! We have to fight our enemy."
"It is Melissa. Call her Melissa." Meant Isaac guilty. "And I cannot just leave! Believe me if I could leave I would."
"Oh come on! We don´t have time for that! Just tell me what you need!"
"I… or better Sam declared very clearly what it needs to get me out of Pi Omicron Lambda 13. I need a written document of me, a written document of the enemy and a host-body that carries me."
"I have this piece of paper and in my diary Sam has written something I think." Dudley handed Isaac the diary and the sheet of paper he got from Brian. "And I think my body should be good as a
host-body."
"You really want to do that?"
"You are a part of him you said? That means you also have a part of his powers. And I need that power to fight our enemy."
"That is right and you are also the only one who has the potential to control these powers. But that is not free. You will have to sacrifice something to earn these powers."
"I would sacrifice anything to safe the ones I love!"
"So be it." Isaac touched Dudley´s forehead with his finger and disappeared. His forehead began to tickle and the tickle turned into a burning. Screaming Dudley went to his knees. Physically and mentally. His mind had to take an unbelievable amount of new impressions. Memories of Sam, a part of his knowledge and emotions.
As the pains eased off Dudley could feel it. This indescribable power. He looked at his hands. They were ice cold, like his arms and his whole body. HE was ice-cold.
"I´ll deal with that later." He thought closed his eyes and used his new powers to disappear.