Chapter 23 – Visions and Instinct
Daniel paced the floor in the Dialing Room, glancing every now and then at the Spacegate. He had been doing that every day since GC-1 returned to the SGB.
"You know…you're going to wear a hole in the floor, Daniel," John said, "and I don't want to be the one who fixes it. We're not going on another mission anytime soon, and Alex's not due back for another three days."
"Yes, I know…but there's really nothing else I could be doing right now. I guess you could say that I'm bored," Daniel lied. The truth of the matter was that he was nervous and worried about Alex being alone on a foreign planet with a strange alien the linguist didn't feel at ease with. Lately, after working with her closely when the Colonel had been impaled, Daniel got a very strange, yet pleasant feeling throughout his body every time she was near. He didn't know what was causing it, but leaving her there on that planet was one of the hardest things he had ever done.
"Well, aren't you in luck!" the Colonel said, putting a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "It's already close to midnight. Go get some sleep. We all should, even if we aren't doing much tomorrow. I say to you all: good night!" The Colonel walked out of the room, but did not turn down the corridor that led to the dormitories. Instead, he had turned to go to the medical bay, and only Daniel noticed.
"Aye, mates…it be time for me Monileek. I—"
"Monileek?" Daniel had never heard this term before.
"Ah, yea. I forgot that ye di'n't know. Every Machiá with an Androidian larva do not sleep at all. Instead, they must go into themselves in the deepest kind of meditation the body allows."
"Ah! Yes! Monileek means deep rest or meditation in Machiá, doesn't it?"
"Aye, that it does. Overnight, we Machiáns must stay in Monileek, as our symbiotes repair and make us better. Ever' three days I need do this, or become very sick. I must go, or risk it. G'night, me hearties!"
"Good night, Dagón," Daniel said.
"Sweet sleep, dude!" Rick called after the alien, and the two remaining men shook hands.
"See you in the morning, Dude," Daniel said.
"Yeah, totally! Likewise."
The two headed down the hall to their sleeping quarters.
Daniel walked into his room, remembering for some reason the days that both he and Alex worked around the clock to save the Colonel. He had enjoyed them thoroughly, and knew he could count on her and talk to her whenever he needed to get something off of his shoulders. Pulling his uniform off and slipping into silky, black sleeping pants, Daniel put his glasses on his nightstand, turned the light off, and fell asleep.
"Get away from her!" Daniel sat bolt upright in his bed, panting and sweating. He knew he had just had a nightmare, but to him it had felt so real. Rubbing a hand over his sweating forehead, and then running both of them down his bare arms, he lay back down again, and pictured once more what he had just dreamt about.
It had seemed so real. Alex stood before him, smiling the way she had at him when they had stopped the bomb and were one final step away from getting the Colonel free from the grips of the artifact. Then, however, Solaris came into view from a sort of fog and Alex began to writhe in agony and fear.
"No! Get away!" she screamed again and again, but Solaris, with a psychotic, evil grin, kept advancing on her, reaching out to places Daniel knew he wouldn't let Alex be touched. "Help!" she screamed again, but no one came.
"Oh," Daniel moaned as he opened his eyes again. The darkness around him didn't feel right to him, and he wondered if he needed to go tell Hoffman about his dream. "I will later in the morning," he muttered to himself and turned over again, hoping to fall asleep as soon as he could.
Daniel fell into a troubled sleep an hour later, yet the dream he had had before was back again, and even more vivid than ever. What led up to the point he had woken up to before was all so clear, though it began to get fuzzy right when Solaris was advancing on Alex. He woke up again, and headed straight for the General's quarters.
Pounding on the door, Daniel became face to face with a very bleary-eyed and annoyed Hoffman.
"What is it, man? It's three in the morning!" the General asked, annoyed at this interruption of sleep.
"I just had a vision, sir. Alex is in pain!"
Hoffman looked at Daniel suspiciously. "Are you sure it's not a dream?" he asked.
"No, sir. I had it twice in a row. You said that I'd get foresight. Could this be it?" Daniel desperately wanted to know.
Hoffman shook his head. "Son, you've only been here for around two months. Usually, the most complicated of your powers comes within half a year since being reincarnated into The System. I think it was just a bad dream…go back to bed."
The linguist was disappointed. "Yes, sir," he said, and reluctantly went back to his room as the General slammed his door shut.
Daniel sat on his bed in the dark, afraid to go back to sleep because he knew he would have that dream again. But, against his will, his eyelids became heavy, and he had no choice but to obey. He drifted to sleep again.
"Stop!" Daniel yelled a while later, thrashing out wildly, and landing on the floor. He looked around, relieved to see he was in his room, and had the comforts of home around him. Getting shakily to his feet, he looked at the clock—it was 4:05 in the morning. Rubbing his eyes, he sought to get dressed. No one would be up this early, so therefore no one could stop him from his plan: he was going back to P97-080 with or without the General's consent, and there was really nothing they could do to stop him.
"Alert! Alert! Unauthorized 'Gate activation!" the female computerized voice said over the blaring klaxons and flashing red lights. All of GC-1 ran to the Dialing Room just in time to see Daniel glance up at them and walk up the ramp, disappearing through the shield, and letting the connection cut off behind him.
"Where did he go?" the General demanded.
"Back to P97-080, man," Dude said as he read off the dialing logs. "Why'd he go?"
"He had a dream," Hoffman said, and the rest of GC-1 just stared at him. "You two," the General said after a moment's hesitation, pointing at Dagón and Colonel O'Brien, "you have a go. I want you out there to bring our boy home. He's facing severe punishments… I want him back in one piece, though. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir," John and Dagón both said, and went rushing to get ready for departure.
Daniel found himself back in the world they had left five days earlier without Alex. Closing his eyes, the man concentrated, letting his mind's eye wander around quickly, looking for Alex. After searching several places by thinking, he finally located the Major. By concentrating harder, Daniel began to see her surroundings through the walls and then finally her.
Seeing her in his mind, however, made him enraged, his eyes snapping open, and his body starting to run. Through his mind, he had been able see her clearly and where she was. In a brightly lit, though very small room she was bloodied, mostly unconscious, and chained to a wall, barely alive. Daniel knew the longer he took to get to her, the closer to death she'd become.
Suddenly paying attention to his environment, Daniel saw that he was rocketing down the steps that led to the back entrance of the dungeons. Barely noticing the two guards he quickly knocked out, he walked down more steps, heading right towards a door at the end of the hall.
From the room came sounds of Alex struggling; then, "No! Get away!" Alex's cries were exactly how they had been in Daniel's dream. Looking in through the barred window, Daniel wanted to know quickly what he was up against, so he knew how to fight…and win. The sight before his eyes sickened him.
While he had run to get her, Alex had been taken from her chains on the wall and forced to lie down on a torture table in the middle of the cramped room. Solaris, mostly undressed, was pulling Alex's tattered skirt up her obviously broken legs, stroking them as he went ever upwards. Alex was terrified, straining against her bonds as hard as she could as she tried to heal the damage. Solaris, seeing that, kept blasting her with energy so that healing them would be impossible by herself. He then got up onto the table and straddled the woman's knees, relishing the control he had over her.
As his hands encircled her neck, Solaris began to laugh.
"Now you shall see the wrath of an Androidian god!" he jeered at the struggling woman beneath him. "All of your talk about killing Artemis and Machiá warriors… Ha! Your precious team isn't here now, are they? And they cannot stop me from taking from you something you highly prize."
In that moment, Solaris dropped the human mask he had kept on, and Daniel, let alone Alex, saw him for the first time what he actually was. Wearing a green toga-like garment, the man had shaggy brown hair and piercing grey-blue eyes. He seemed ancient, and also somewhat artificial. He also felt strange to Daniel, and he knew that what he had sensed before was in fact an Androidian god.
"Now you will have the pleasure and honor to be with the greatest of the Androidian gods," he announced as his eyes flashed a red color, another indication that he was an Androidian. "Worship your god, Zeus!" As he finished that, he reached a hand down to the neckline of her dress and yanked, tearing the fabric and exposing her shoulder, though nothing more than that; he then began to take the rest of what he had been wearing off, intent on coupling with Alex for her ignorance to the Androidian race.
Daniel couldn't take it anymore. Not thinking anything other than how to destroy the Androidian and save Alex, he burst into the room.
"No! Alex! Get away from her, you bastard!" he bellowed, launching himself at the King, grabbing a Sartgun from his belt in the process.
Zeus leapt off the table he and Alex were on and stood at a ready stance, his eyes towards the sky, as if he was calling on some other more powerful being to help him, his arms held out to his sides. Daniel charged at the other man, and both of them clashed together. The fight for the woman on the torture table had begun!
The room was ablaze with lightning bolts as they erupted from Zeus's fingers, making the air alive with electricity. Dodging them became the linguist's first priority, as he knew one hit from them would fry his attempts at saving Alex, let alone his insides.
"You will pay for your insolence!" the alien shouted as his eyes glowed once more, sending a lightning bolt at Daniel, which shallowly grazed the man's arm.
"No, it is you who shall suffer! I am the Preserver. Fear my wrath!" Daniel shouted in pain and rage, not thinking clearly at what he was saying. He had a burn mark, but his arm was still working. The man retaliated by shooting his Sartgun at the alien, hitting him. The battle continued.
Both men got in some shots against the other, but Daniel was the one who finished the fight. Right as Zeus was about to summon another lightning bolt, the linguist dodged around to the alien's back and shot him for the fifth time with his Sartgun. It killed the Androidian instantly, and Zeus just stood there for a moment. Daniel learned that the standard three hits weren't enough for an Androidian god. The false god fell to the floor.
"Daniel?" Alex said weakly, her energy draining from her.
"I'm here," he said gently, ripping her bonds from the table and scooping her up. "I'm taking you home. Don't worry."
Hugging her to him as she struggled to wrap her arms around his neck, he left the palace to find himself in the middle of a cheering group of people. One man came forward.
"My name is Flahari," the man said. "You must come back sometime soon, for you will be considered heroes on Olympus. You killed the Androidian god Zeus…a feat no man has dared do."
Daniel smiled, despite his confusion. "We'll come back to check on you all. I've got to get her home, though. I need to get to the Spacegate!"
"Let him pass!" Flahari shouted and a path was formed straight to the Spacegate. Daniel ran there and punched in the dialing code for home. As the shield swirled outward, he looked down at Alex. She looked terrible, but also grateful as she gazed back at him. Smiling slightly, he stepped through the Spacegate, and found himself face-to-face with the rest of GC-1 on the other side.
"Sir! He's back!" John called as Daniel carried Alex down the ramp.
"We need a medical team in the 'Gate Room ASAP, dudes!" Dude cried from the Dialing Room. "Major Croft is severely injured!"
"No! Cancel that!" Daniel cried as he walked down the ramp. "I'll take her. I've got a couple of burns that need attention, anyway." Daniel started running down the corridors to the medical bay, making everyone worry and wonder about what had happened to them while Daniel had been alone on the planet with Alex.