Chapter 17

"Where is she?" I yelled, pinning Dr Lionel against a table, knocking beakers and tube racks clattering to the ground. There were water droplets everywhere; it smelled as if the whole ocean had once been in here.

B.E.N had come into the room whilst I chased the ship and confirmed Ariel had been here from analysing a drop of water, nevertheless finding and verifying tubes of blood that belonged to her. I came through and found Dr Lionel struggling with B.E.N, who surprisingly put up a fight.

"I told you," He wheezed, using his tentacles to slime over my hands as I had rammed a nearby chair into his body. "She's gone, I dealt with a merchant, and I do not know where he spends his leisure!" He attempted to push against me, but I was filled with such venom that I snarled into his face as I dug back at him, running his body the length of the table, throwing off medical items and machinery, exploding on the ground.

"What did you do to her?" I spat into his face that his snail eyes reclined.

"Boy," Lionel stared at him with little eyes. "Do you know who you are dealing with?"

"I said," I leaned in, my eyes burning that Lionel shrank back into his own flubber. "What did you do to her?" I nodded towards B.E.N who was darting everywhere, trying to find clues of where she could have been taken to. "You have plenty of blood samples here to clone her. What were you doing with her?"

"She is a myth, a legend," Lionel glanced at a desk near a wall. "Folklore of a forgotten city from thousands of years ago! There have been very little sightings of them and even then, none documented in any archives. You do not know what she is capable of, if there are more of her, what they can inflict-"

"She is a girl!" I roared, B.E.N looking up startled from his search. "She is a young girl who just so happened to have trust in me to help her, and yet here I am, finding you the culprit in her kidnapping just after you save me, what does that make you?"

"A snake!" B.E.N shouted, raising his hand in the air.

"Where?" I looked around; snakes were very uncommon on Montressor, never mind in the city.

"No," B.E.N looked puzzled. "I mean-cause he's-traitor…Jim!" B.E.N yelled, pointing at me. I looked back at Lionel in my grip; little did I know he heaved a glass cylinder my way. I ducked in time only for Lionel to fall from my hands onto the floor.

I jumped onto his squidgy back; my weight wasn't enough to keep him down as he continued to crawl.

"Jimmy, I've found something!" B.E.N announced, seemed like a computer as I heard the screen bleep under his clicks.

I struggled with Lionel, rolling and taking blows from his flying arms. Lionel grabbed my hair and pulled me back and I winced in pain. Just as I was off the ground with him, I swatted at his arm and lunged for a table, gliding over the surface, taking equipment down with me, and picking a cable near the puddles of water and back at Lionel. Lionel made it for the door, but I intersected and managed to get one wrap around of cable, then another and another until I became dizzy and Lionel was secure, then I heaved against him, pushing him on his back to not sludge away.

"What do you want with her?" Lionel gasped, taking in long breaths from the impact of the floor.

"To get her back home," I crouched down low next to him, watching the sweat melt into his slimy skin. "What did you do to her?"

"I conducted tests." He said. "She was quite remarkable. Took them like a normal human-"

"Because she is half human!" I gritted my teeth. "Did you hurt her?"

Lionel's questioning gaze pondered over my face, not knowing whether to answer. "I used electrical pulses-"

"Did it hurt her?"

"Yes." Blind rage flashed before me and the next thing I knew my fist was bleeding, searing pain thrashing at my knuckles. I had punched the ground near Lionel's head, whose eyes dilated, the tiles beside him had cracked, droplets of dark red dotted onto the white tiles.

"Jim?" B.E.N sounded timid, scared of my temper.

"Yeah?" I gave Lionel one look over and stood, hugging my hand.

B.E.N cleared his throat. "I found an email. The Dr and a man named Viscardi Denholm conversed recently about a creature of value." B.E.N looked sadly at Dr Lionel. "He's going to use her in a show."

"Th-That's it?" I blurted, re-reading the email, nothing of the town, the galaxy or planet. Just a man's name.

"There has to be something else." I went through the rest of Lionel's emails for the name of Viscardi, nothing, went through the name onto the search engine, there was nothing. I looked back at Lionel on the floor who had his eyes closed. "How much did he pay for her? Were you even man enough to know her name?"

Dr Lionel opened one eye, briefly spotted me, and calmly shut it again, entirely composed. "Such business of privacy will not be discussed with the likes of you."

"Likes of me? And what is that, exactly?" I found humour in his tone, despite my hatred for the things he'd done.

"Someone who is nothing." A springing feeling snapped inside, somewhere deep and dark, in the hollows of my conscious.

"Guess we have something in common then."

"JIM!" I had screamed, but my cries before had drowned out my voice, it had cracked and I croaked on the name. He shouted some more, the pleading in his voice unmistakable. The water was sloshing so much, I sat in a slither of water, and the creatures had begun to pick up the pace that I knocked my head off the top of the box.

I was placed roughly into a dark, cold room, using the last of the water to moisten my skin some more as I began to shiver. The next thing I knew, a loud, racketing sound vibrated all around me, heat slowly radiating from beneath. All the while I heard his shouts from elsewhere, muffled and snubbed out.

Then I felt my stomach turn and turn, the queasy feeling made me wretch, but nothing came out of my system. I was completely empty. I heard the other creatures begin to talk, much closer and easier to make out the words.

"Who on Mercy was that?" One said, breathing heavily.

"I don't know, but we'll have to warn the boss," One wasn't as winded, but slightly distraught. "The boy could be trouble."

"No," I tried to whimper, but all that came out was a whine.

"Pit stop?" The other said. "I'm starving, could use some Galacticus steak right now."

"No, boss said straight back to Viscardi; he wants to see her right away." Then a loud rushing sound filled my ears, and then I felt more than sick, I felt like my whole body was melding into different shapes within seconds.