"You are lying!" Aenos shouted.
"No." Kaarvok said. "I never lie. These creatures once were your fellow comrades, but now they are nothing more then my servants. My family."
Krishool.
The word still roamed through Crichton's mind.
What did it mean?
Was
it just a swearword?
Or was is something else?
A name even?
A
title?
Something far more secret?
"No!" Aenos said. "You lie! Peacekeepers would never bow down to your wishes! They would die before crawling into the dust before you!"
Kaarvok smiled.
"I am afraid that you are wrong. Again." Kaarvok said. "You see, when Sebaceans, and any other species for that matter, are twinned, their brains will be damaged."
"Twinning?" Crichton asked.
"Yes, I prefer to call it that, instead of cloning."
"Cloning?" Crichton asked.
"Well, let me show you."
With a swish of his hand, Kaarvok fired a beam
of light at Aenos, which covered the Sebacean in a large, organic
bubble.
For a moment, Crichton thought Kaarvok killed Aenos, but
that moment was brief.
Kaarvok said cloning, not killing.
And it didn't take long for Crichton to see something happening inside the bubble.
Something moved, and something split into two separate beings, after which the bubble burst and two Aenos's were sitting in the cell.
"What did you do to me!" they shouted, before looking upon each other in awe.
Aenos couldn't believe his eyes.
Both of them couldn't believe their eyes.
It was like looking into a mirror, only the mirror had a mind of it's own...
"I 'twinned' you." Kaarvok said witty. "You are the same. Equal. But different."
Kaarvok's eyes dwelled at Crichton, and John knew why.
He looked exactly like a Sebacean, but he wasn't.
"Imagine me 'twinning' you over thirty times." Kaarvok said to the two Aenos's.
"Forty times. Fifty times!"
Both Aenos's didn't know what Kaarvok was talking about.
Either he didn't understand him, because he wasn't a technician but a soldier, or because he was too shocked to even think straight.
But John knew.
Being a
scientist in the Unchartered Territories really paid off.
Being a
scientist with a gun paid off even more.
"The brain-damage would be so severely that even a man with the most finest of minds would become...yes...something like that!"
Kaarvok pointed at his Xarai.
"The beings which I lovingly call Xarai." he said.
"But the only difference between a Xarai and a Peacekeeper is the gun which he holds in his holster!"
Both Aenos's rushed to attack Kaarvok, but he only laughed as he saw that their arms could not reach him.
"Krishool." Crichton repeated in his mind.
"Krishool."
FLASH.
"Does this mean you accept my proposal?" Harvey said.
John stood silently in a green and blossoming meadow.
Harvey approached him from the shadows of the trees.
A soft wind blew through the leaves.
Earth's moon stood directly above them in the sky. In broad daylight.
"During the circumstances..." John said to Harvey. "I really don't have a choice, do I?"
"That's splendid news, John." Harvey said as he walked towards him.
"You won't regret this, John." Harvey said.
"If I had a dime for every time someone said that to me..." John said.
"Oh no, John." Harvey said. "No jokes. We're talking business here."
As soon as Harvey said that, the meadow faded away and John and Harv walked right into a casino.
Harvey suddenly wore the cap and clothing of a dealer at poker.
As John walked in, all the people in the casino started clapping.
"Can I get a Hell Yeah!" Harvey shouted as he raised his arm into the air.
"HELL YE-"
The people stopped shouting as John pulled Harvey's arm down.
"No, Harv." John said to him. "No more of this bullshit. No more quotes. No more references..."
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Harvey said.
John wanted to punch him in the face, but Harvey disappeared and reappeared behind John.
"This is only temporary." John said as he grabbed Harvey and pushed him on top of one of the blackjack-tables.
"You want that chip. I want to live. It's about MY survival. Comprende?"
"Capiche." Harvey said.
A burst of sudden extreme headaches forced John upon the ground.
Harvey felt the pain too, but he did not fall to the ground.
He stood firmly and with clenched fists and eyes closed in the centre of the casino.
He withstood the pain, and forced it back.
The casino withered away behind them, leaving a dark and empty space around them.
"Krishool." John said as he crawled up. "What does it mean?"
Harvey opened his eyes.
"The criminally insane." he answered.
FLASH.
"Hello?" Joolushko shouted through the empty corridors.
She refused to believe this ship was completely empty.
Were there really no other passengers aboard this large, beautiful vessel?
"Chiana?"
She shouted through other corridors of Moya, but no-one, not even the girl who brought her here in the first place, responded to her cries for help.
She was lost.
She could not find her way.
And
she was afraid.
Terrified.
Although she thought this ship was beautiful, the interior of the ship, especially the ceiling, reminded Joolushko of bones.
Not a pleasant thing to be reminded of when you are afraid, lost and alone.
"Oh, please, God," Joolushko muttered and cried as she walked through the many corridors of Moya.
"Please, please, please don't leave me alone like this. I do not want to die!"
She fell to the ground, in the middle of the walkway, sobbing and crying.
Thinking about the past.
She missed her
parents.
She missed her cousins.
She missed everyone.
And now she was never going to see all of them again!
"They're probably all dead!" she cried.
Suddenly she looked up, startled by a strange object which she saw moving in the corner of her eye.
It was round and yellow, and seemed to have two eyes,
with lights in them.
It made a low, humming sound as it drove
towards her.
"Who are you?" Joolushko asked scared. "What do you want?"
She recognised the thing as a robot.
It was
definitely made out of metallic or hard substances, and it didn't
seem to be alive.
She jumped as it made a squeaky sound.
At first she thought it was going to attack her, but then it turned around and moved towards the same direction from where it had just come.
"Do you want me to follow you?" Joolushko said as she made it make another squeaky sound.
She gathered all her courage and followed the little DRD towards Pilot's Den...
"Kaarvok!" Crichton said to the alien as he stuck his head out of his wooden cell.
"You promised you would let me go!" he firmly added.
"Did I?" Kaarvok said. "I really can't remember saying anything like that."
Crichton did not detect any sign of dishonesty about Kaarvok, so apparently he spoke the truth.
"My memory is failing me more often these days." Kaarvok spoke. "I'm getting old you see. And a hundred years imprisoned by the Peacekeepers doesn't actually improve your physical status."
He sighed and scratched his metal plate, like it was just another part of his body.
"I was imprisoned by the Peacekeepers as well." Crichton said. "But I escaped."
He used his words with
caution, hoping to gain Kaarvok's trust, although he didn't like
the prospect of being friends with a madman.
Or a mad
scientist.
"Really?" Kaarvok asked interested.
He moved closer to Crichton's cell.
John could see the keys to John's cell dangling on Kaarvok's belt...
"Then tell me, how is Moxan these days? Still torturing prisoners?"
John shook his head.
"I don't know who that is. I was imprisoned by a man named Scorpius."
"Scorpius?" Kaarvok said wondering as he touched the wooden cell and looked at the sky.
"Never heard of him." he finally said. "Moxan is the commander of the Peacekeeper facility not far from here. He used to torture his prisoners severely. Badly. Using his precious Luxan weaponry to burn the skin right off our flesh."
He said it as if he watched it in his mind, and enjoyed it.
"The pain was excruciating. But I got my revenge..."
Kaarvok's face began to shine.
"I cut out his eye! And I stole this pretty machine..."
He began to stroke the device on his wrist.
"That's great." John said. "Really. That's
fantastic. But putting that aside...
I need to get off this
planet. The Peacekeepers are hunting me down. If I don't leave this
planet, they will capture me and put me in that goddamned chair
again, and I'm definitely not in the mood for that right
now!"
John was tired.
He wanted to get out.
He wanted to go to bed.
In his head he pictured his bunk in his quarters on Moya.
"The Peacekeepers will stop hunting you when they cannot find you no more." Kaarvok said.
"Yeah," Crichton said. "They probably will, but not Scorpius. Scorpius will come after me no matter what. And he won't stop until either he is dead, or I am his prisoner."
The only problem was that Scorpius refused to die, and keeps on surviving every single attack on his life.
"Then there must be something special about you, no?" Kaarvok said witty and keen.
"This Scorpius fellow must follow you for a reason, does he not?"
"Wormholes." Crichton thought.
"Sebacean or not," Kaarvok said. "You must be valuable."
He smiled.
"And here you are. In my custody. I can't wait to solve your mystery, HUUMAN."
Suddenly there was a loud crack, and both Crichton and Kaarvok turned their heads to see the two Aenos's escape their cell and run for their lives.
Both went into opposite directions as they ran into the forest.
"Capture them!" Kaarvok shouted. "Kill them only if you must!"
The Xarai pursued the two Aenos's.
Clones who hunted clones.
The Xarai ran like animals and reminded John of 'The Planet of The Apes'.
Although both Sebaceans ran pretty fast, there was no way to outrun them, because there were just too many Xarai.
The creatures surrounded them and pulled them to the ground.
As the Xarai brought their prisoners to their master, Kaarvok nodded proud.
"You did well." he said to them as if he spoke to children. "A reward is in order."
Kaarvok turned to both Aenos's, who laid next to each other on the ground.
With a quick movement, Kaarvok pointed at the Aenos who sat to the right.
"Bring this one back to his cell!" he decided witty.
"You may eat the other one."
John couldn't bare to see what was about to happen.
The Xarai looked upon Aenos with pure bloodlust written in their eyes.
Their rotting, yellow teeth were visible as they opened their mouths and began to feast off Aenos's body.
The Aenos in his cell felt the same as Crichton did. Even worse.
He averted his eyes, knowing that what he was about to see was the most weirdest and scariest sight of all.
His own death.
But Kaarvok saw the Aenos in the cell close his eyes and he pointed at him with no mercy.
"Make him watch." he said coldblooded and smiled.
Three Xarai grabbed his head and forced him to watch.
This was torture like Crichton had never seen before.
Now John knew that he had to get out of here.
Before he would be the next victim to this Doctor Mengele of the Unchartered Territories.
This was a man who loved to play with genetics and blood, specifically blood.
A man who was ruthless and merciless, a criminal and a thief, and a surgeon who would love to cut on his patients.
Without anaesthetics.
And Crichton knew that Kaarvok couldn't wait to begin cutting on him, to see what he was really like on the inside. To see if he really wasn't Sebacean.
Crichton could tell all these things from this the look in Kaarvok's eyes.
Kaarvok's keys felt cold in John's clenched fist.
He had to get out of here.
Fast.
