Part 3

Chameleons Break Free

Rich found that he couldn't get himself to move, for several seconds. The scene in front of him was just too stupefying for words or action.

Adrian wore nothing but a hospital gown that drooped on his tall frame. Truly, it was a credit to the sheer intensity of the spectacle in front of them that no one jibed about Adrian standing on a lab table, naked but for a billowing open hospital gown.

Adrian crouched down and scooted across the table at an alarming rate, on all four legs- just like a chameleon. He flew to the side of the room, with the startled technician dangling from his freakishly long tongue. Then, with a twisting movement of his body, the apparition that was Adrian flung the technician into a wall. The man fell instantly unconscious, and Adrian's long white tongue snapped back into his mouth like a rebounding rubber band.

As Rich, Hal, and Collin stood in the doorway, Adrian turned towards them. Rich couldn't tell whether there was any recognition in his eyes, since they were so alien. An extra, gray-white membrane seemed to flick over them. Adrian on all fours, his legs spread white, cocked his head as he regarded them. It was incredible. Just like a lizard. His tongue flicked out between them, tasting the air. He took a few steps in their direction, but then stopped. His tongue flicked at the air one last time and then, without the barest hint of hesitation, he leapt so quickly he literally disappeared springing on his four bent limbs and vanishing.

Then there was the loud sound of gunfire, and bullets tore through the wall and several glass beakers to Rich's right. He instantly turned to the left to look into the back of the room.

There was a man there, kneeling in front of a chair, a semi automatic assault rifle in his hands. Had he been a guard, sleeping on the job perhaps? But where was…

Movement above Rich's head sent his gaze upwards. His jaw dropped even further, making it ache. Adrian was hanging from the CEILING. He seemed to be gripping in to the surface somehow. In a head-snapping movement, the Adrian-chameleon entity sent his tongue outward again and Rich could only barely follow it as the long strand of white flashed across the room.

The guard slumped over, and Rich saw then that the tongue had gone through the man's chest. Adrian/chameleon retracted his tongue, and allowed him/itself to fall back to the ground with a thump!

No one said a word for several seconds. The sound of tinkling glass was all that could be heard in the room.

Then Collin stepped forward into the room, raised his hands, and cautiously approached Adrian. Adrian turned towards him as he approached, his luminescent white inner eyelids blinking.

"Hey… Adrian. What's uh…going on? You want a, uh drink maybe?. You're lookin a bit pale."

Adrian skittered backwards on his hands and feet across the lab table as Collin approached. Then he lifted his head suddenly, and the white membranes seemed to rescind from his eyes. Then his eyes shut completely, and he passed out, rolling off the table and onto the floor.

Rich and Collin spoke at exactly the same time.

"Hal…" They looked at each other in surprise.

Hal made a show of sighing heavily.

"Yea, yea I got it man." Hal went into the room, grabbed Adrian, and effortlessly slung him over one shoulder.

Rich looked critically at Adrian from where he hung on Hal's shoulder.

"Well, besides the whole weird possession, he looks in OK health."

Collin grinned. "I guess they didn't get a chance to give him too much of a probing."

Hal laughed at that, glancing at the guard slumped against the wall.

"Yeah, it looks like it ended up the other way around."

Collin laughed with him.

Rich frowned. It wasn't funny. He went over to the guard. The hole in his chest was small, maybe bullet sized. It was in his upper chest, and it looked like he was still breathing. So it missed his lungs. That was good. He decided not to comment on it, but he glowered at Collin and Hal as he led the way out of the room.

"I'll scout on ahead, and see if I can find a way out of here. Bring Adrian as quick as you can." He told them.

And before they could say anything in response to that, he chanted his words of power in Latin, and flew down the hall.

As Rich ran, he sincerely hoped he wasn't accumulating too much of that Paradox stuff Jeremy always talked about. He shouldn't be, since he was moving quickly, but not too much faster than what a human could achieve with years of training. It's just that it saved a lot of energy this way. Jeremy had warned him of doing too much in front of the technocrats though. Their extreme lack of belief in altering reality the way the Hermetics did made it a lot more dangerous somehow, apparently.

Rich enjoyed his run though. The strange leap-step he had to use was a change from the way he had ever moved before. He simply took some of the energy that was in the room and added it to his own movement. It was like having a little boost behind each step.

Not only that, but the area he was in was so strange. He knew he shouldn't be distracted by anything but what he was doing, but he couldn't help it. Some of the rooms he ran past seemed to have portals in them, with a whole variety of bizarre scenes behind them.

Rich quickly turned down one hallway, and then another and another and so on, seemingly without end. He kept careful track of his movement though, so he could make it back. Finally he came to stairs, with a door at the top. He stepped up to it quickly, and opened it slowly.

Not good.

The door opened into a cavernous room with machinery in it. At the far end of the room Rich could see the exit to the outside. But not 10 feet in front of him were several men in dark uniforms, all holding weapons of some kind, and some of the men had obvious metal enhancements. One of them held up a large looking gun, and a spiral of flame licked the air towards Rich.

Just as it touched the end of Rich's sleeve, he shouted in alarm and leapt backwards without thought, falling over the railing and hitting the ground hard below him.

He staggered to his feet, wincing, and shouted his words of power again, terrified. He ran down the hallway faster than he ever thought possible. It wasn't until he turned down the third hallway that he felt confident his legs weren't seriously injured from the fall. They did feel good and bruised though.

Barely a minute had passed when an alarm sounded. Only one minute after that he could hear the sound of many running footsteps behind him. Rich was so intent on maintaining as much distance between him and his pursuers that he only put the bare minimum into remembering the way he had come.

That was why it came as a surprise when he turned onto a long hallway and almost didn't notice Collin and the Adrian carrying Hal at the far end of the hall. He shouted as he ran.

"Run!"

That is when he felt the air behind him sizzle with heat, and then he heard the sound of gunfire. He dove forward, his momentum carrying him into a flying roll and then a skid across the ground.

When he collected himself enough to look up, he saw Hal, stepping in front of Adrian who was slumped on the ground behind him.

"So you want a fight do ya?" Hal asked, practically growling the challenge.

Collin grabbed his shoulder though, trying to pull him into a side room.

"Hal, this is not fistfight time" he said sounding terrified. Rich could hardly blame him. He was shaking himself. How did they get into this?

He never got to find out whether Hal would listen to reason though. His eyes bulged as he saw what was happening behind the brawny hockey player.

Hal saw him staring at him, and then looked behind Rich, where Rich knew the technocrats were equally silent. That was odd, certainly, that they weren't doing anything more to attack the intruders.

"WHAT? What is it? Why is everyone staring at me? Come on! FIGHT! Cowards!"

But Hal and Collin couldn't see it. They couldn't see that Adrian was on his feet again. And his eyes were ghostly white.

There was a blur of motion as Adrian sped on all fours up a wall and around Hal and Collin towards the Technocrats behind Rich.

Rich turned. They all raised their guns as the speeding apparition that was only half Rich's roommate, flew towards them. His tongue shot out of his mouth in a rapid series of strikes. He put two holes in each of them in a matter of seconds. Their screams pierced the air, and an arc of blood followed Adrian's tongue back into his mouth.

Adrian looked back at them, those large ghostly white eyes seeming to glow with something unholy, and the creature cocked his head to the side, offering no other comment to what he had just done. Then he turned back to the front and flew down the hallway, sometimes scampering across the walls, and sometimes the ceiling, with ungodly speed.

"Have I mentioned that I like this dream?" asked Collin, as they stepped over the fallen Technocrats and raced after the insane Adrian/Chameleon.

"Shut up" said Rich.

More screams greeted them as Rich led the way back to where he had just been near the stairs and cavern.

"Well," began Collin casually, "sounds like-"

"Shut UP" said Rich, cutting him off.

They finally reached the stairs and door Rich had been to before, and when they ran up into it-

It was a slaughterhouse. There were technocrats lying on the ground everywhere, and at the far end of it, towards the door, was the clearly possessed Adrian, who was flying all over the place while men shot at him wildly.

By the time they actually crossed the distance to Adrian, the combat he was in was over. As soon as it ended, he slumped to the ground again, unconscious. Hal picked him up without a word, and they ran towards the exit.

Rich heard loud metallic noises and glanced behind him

There was a huge hangar door next to the one they had just exited. The grated vertical door flung itself upwards, and several... things came out.

They were huge metal machines with arms and legs like a man. They marched toward where Rich stood, their heavy steps vibrating loud on the metal floor.

"Let's GO" said Rich, and he opened the door, running back out into the night with Collin, Hal, and the unconscious Adrian in tow. Rich closed the door quickly behind them, but he knew it wouldn't hold.

They flew across the clearing uphill, towards the forest. And Rich could only pray for another miracle.