(See! I haven't forgotten! Thank you for all the reviews, (yay, you're not dead yet!!) and I'll try to update soon.

Hmmm, I was just reading the last chapter, and it almost seemed mary sue-ish. Can anybody tell me if that's the case? I absotively despise mary sues and all their sueishness! SAMUS IS NOT A MARY SUE!!...so I hope I'm not making her into one. Tell me, please.

Okay, now that that's over with. Thanks for listening to me rant...as if you had much of a choice... anyway, on with the story!)

XI : No More Time

Samus scrolled through information frantically, searching, searching. They would have a record to where they'd put her suit parts... now that she had the computer's files, it was relatively simple to locate the information she wanted. A map of station Kelta-Z, complete with recently updated information. She downloaded the data onto her suit with a connection in the left forefinger, then found the charts and located where her helmet an cannon were stored on the map.

A research lab, several floors down. Evidently the pirates were still trying to fathom the Chozo technology. Good luck, she thought grimly. The Chozo had been the most intelligent beings in the known universe. They were considered extinct now, but Samus was convinced the few remaining bird-people had gone on to seek a better place to set up their peaceful civilization—another part of the universe, somewhere nobody else had the presence of mind to imagine possible. All they'd left were ruins, statues, and a great mystery.

That and their hatchling, the warrior, a woman with a job to do. Samus typed quickly, knowing she should never trust her time on the computer—the longer she stayed in one spot, the more risk there was of someone finding her. Someone, or something. If she were captured now...

She preferred not to think of the alternative. An agonizing search, then Samus found the information she'd been looking for. The inhibitor on her suit could be changed and controlled by the computer; a simple code would disactivate it. A bit more hacking, and she activated the code, feeling the subtle rush of power through her sit as the functions smoothly restored working. Another code, and the device unbonded with the suitmetal, leaving the bounty hunter free.

She dashed out of the room the instant her work was complete, each footstep seeming to echo weirdly from the synthetic-plastered walls and ceiling. It was deserted—too empty and dead for comfort. She'd seen the map displayed on the computer, her mind already plotting a course of action; just check it on her helmet computer, and...

Oh, no. Samus stopped halfway through her plans and groaned inwardly. How could she had been so stupid? She may have downloaded the map, but without her helmet she had no way of viewing it. It would be guesswork all the way down to rescue her equipment—and would more than likely shave off valuable minutes from her already-tight boundary.

Racing down the corridor, the all-encroaching silence making her steps seem to ring in her ears, Samus could feel her heart thrumming alarmingly in her chest. Running so much was nothing new to her...it was the emptiness. No space pirates. No Ridley. The place was a disaster waiting to happen.

Hundreds of thousands of red eyes gleamed up at Ridley, standing like a stone dragon in the center of the top level—a single, gigantic holding bay. The man standing unmoving beside him was hardly visible to those who were far away, and insignificant to those who were close enough to notice. He was nothing, compared to the Lord of Kelta-Z in full power.

"This will be the biggest battle of your lives," Ridley said, sibilant voice magnified to fill the entire assembly. And the last. "Fight for all that they did, to us and to our ancestors, the first pirates. Fight for freedom from their cruel, oppressive laws and biased ways. Space pirates will rule!"

A hissing roar swelled from the crowd, rising and reverberating, through the walls, through the station. And, the dragon thought, a smile creeping into place on his long snout, and Ridley will rule the Space pirates.

He called forward a company of pirates about fifteen large, barely noticeable from the host. In a lower voice, he gathered them around the food of his pedestal and said, "Get some 'nice' bits from the video surveillance, then turn on the gas. Whatever you do, don't go near the cell itself. I don't want to take any chances."

"Yes, sir," the head of the company said.

Samus turned back from another dead end. She'd been searching for an elevator, no success. The time was ticking steadily on, she knew; it would all be useless unless she could find her suit parts. They were part of her.

She kept looking, frustration at her situation clouding her thoughts and building up in her chest like a growling, pressuring heat. She had narrowed it down to a specific area, but the exact location eluded her; Samus felt like she was going in circles, and would never stop but end up wasting all her time in this single loop...

It was a huge relief when she finally struck a corridor that she hadn't already traversed, the blinking iris hatch at the end sliding open to reveal an elevator shaft. The feeling was short-lived, however, as the slowly whirring platform transported its sole passenger down three floors and to another maze.

She vaguely remembered this section of the map, and cut through the other rooms as quickly as she dared. All empty. Wondering where all the space pirates were made Samus shiver, in spite of herself; she concentrated on finding her equipment.

It was agony, though. Just the...implication of so many pirates gathered together—as obviously none were down here—was too much too imagine. The only thing she could imagine them doing was planning an attack...one of epic proportions.

Then a hatch in front of her slid open, and there was the research lab—a multi-dimensional open place full of cabinets, bizarre instruments, and tables. Computers, too, to hold the data they acquired. It didn't take Samus long to find her cannon and helmet. An irrational, primitive anger surged through her body as she surveyed the analystic machines and wires connected to HER power suit parts. How dare they—how dare they violate the Chozo's creation. Space pirate scum!

She ran to the table at which they were set up, ripping wires and attachments off and quickly feeling up and around helmet and cannon in turn. Nothing seemed to be damaged; with an inward sigh of relief, Samus settled her suit parts onto her body, the suit automatically accepting them and sealing it together like they'd never been taken off. It was an odd sensation, like something healing that she hadn't been aware was broken.

There was no time for anything else, Samus reminded herself fiercely. Now that she had her helmet, she had to find any destruction device on her map and activate it... She brought up the map without delay, panning through the levels of the base. It was far larger than she'd explored, or expected—sixteen levels to her measly four or five. Most of them were below the ones she'd been in, but there was one above...odd, Samus thought. The whole floor was one huge room.

"What did you say?" Ridley's voice was cold as ice, and just as slippery. The head of the space pirate company he'd sent to give the clips to Arastrough stared up at him; stoically, considering it was Ridley he was facing.

"She's gone, sir."

The ruler of Kelta-Z was silent for a moment. Then—"Send old clips, then. Try to determine how she escaped." He was back in the command room, with his experiment; the rest of the space pirates still milled about the holding floor, waiting for the signal. The company leader saluted and took his company marching off down the corridor toward the security vaults; Ridley pondered him, turned back to the computer, then, in a sudden good mood, seriously considered promoting the creature. At least he would die happy.

The reason for his happiness was on the view screen. Warning: Laboratory B4C: Testing Interrupted. Equipment Damage Detected. Source Unknown. The dragon would bet his life that that was Aran, after her power suit.

A smile cracked his face as the system picked up the 'foreign entity' on her way up the elevator, then down the higher-security corridors leading to...weaponry control room. She was onto his plan...or, at least, one of them.

Samus felt like there were invisible eyes watching her as she pelted down the empty corridors toward the place her map had determined was the control room of the auto-destruct explosives. The way the time had passed was astonishing—according to her helmet computer, she had only twenty minutes before the feeds would get to Kelta-Z, and it was still too little. Samus ran faster, footsteps echoing out into the oppressive silence.

There it was, the door. She activated the iris hatch and it slid open, revealing a large room, basically empty, but with a large, boiler-like structure in the corner to the right of the entrance. She could imagine that normally the place would be riddled with guards, tapping back and forth or lurking in the shadows, making sure no strange rebels leapt into the room and set off the controls; the emptiness once again felt too hollow, too cover-up, to be true.

She checked her map again, noting that an entry passageway was very near the room—just up and around a few more corridors. It seemed odd that everything was going so well...but she had to move quickly. Samus dashed over to the huge pipemetal structure, searching for the controls in her scan visor. They were simple—a timer, up to forty standard minutes, a knob with marks around the edges, and a full keypad for the code.

She'd looked that up through the computers in the research lab before checking the map and setting off, so it was no trouble. The instructions flipped up in her visor as she summoned them: turn knob right thirty degrees, push in, right another fifty degrees, pull out, left one hundred-eighty; adjust controls for desired area; punch in button code. She supposed that it was a precaution; by the time anyone put half of this in, the space pirate guards would be on top of them and they'd never have a chance to complete it...

To Activate, her visor told her in scrolling type, Push Knob In.

Samus hesitated just a moment before she completed the sequence, fingers just inches from her goal. She'd come here to find out about Adam, and would leave the same way she'd arrived—still unknowing, still with that terrible feeling that she'd left something behind. She hovered, almost feeling that HQ deserved what they got for trying to work with a traitor like Ridley...with a surge of anger, she remembered Arastrough and his petty lies, trying to keep her out of the way and harmless...

They don't know.

She pushed the dial firmly in. A red light came on in a screen on the explosive device, blinking. Fifteen minutes until activation. Her heart pounding, Samus spun around and raced toward the door, already plotting the course on which she'd escape quickest. She drew her cannon to activate the iris hatch, several meters from it still...and stopped short.

The door had just been opened from the outside.

A hundred possibilities whirled through her mind in that single instant before the new being was revealed. Space Pirates, returning. A hungry, semi-sentient creature, somehow loose in the base. Ridley...not Ridley. It couldn't be.

It wasn't. It wasn't space pirates, wasn't Ridley. It was much, much worse.

It was Adam Malkovich.

(Don't we all just ADORE cliffies?)