Chapter 2

The suit continued to advance while Samus tried desperately to open the door with her hands. Soon it stood about 1 meter away from her, it pressed a button on the arm cannon and took careful aim. She flinched when it fired a large sticky web which pasted her to the wall. Samus looked out of the side of her eye in confusion and wondered where the stick-net had come from. Suddenly the helmet flew off and a head popped up from inside the suit. Samus shook her head in disbelief.

"Hi Samus." Derek said. "Hold on I'll be out of this thing in a second." He ducked back into the suit and looked for the open button. When he finally found it the shoulder gaurds pulled back from the neck and revealed a hole just large enough for someone to slip in and out of. "Derek? What are you doing? And why did you fire a stick-net at me?" Derek hopped out of the suit and began cutting his wife out of the net.

"I didn't do that. The power-suit did." Derek said innocently.

"Oh, How?"

"That jerk, Farkus, had me install a security system to prevent burglery, and so in the case of you being injured inside the suit, it can carry out the mission by itself. I accidentally set it off while I was inside the suit."

"Hmm." Samus said pulling one of her arms free of the net. "Any other upgrades he had you install?"

"Yes. He also had me install a heat-sight visor enhancment, a 1500X zoom feature, a couple jet nozzles with plasma based fuel, and an advanced tracking device/comm unit." Samus nodded. "I hope you didn't mess with the mag-boots."

"Actually Farkus told me to install an artificial gravity unit. But I didn't, too complicated."

"Why didn't he have a maintenance engineer do this?"

"Because he's a cheap guy. The jerk didn't want to pay the money just to install some stuff that a baby could install. There." he finished cutting the net off the wall and began helping Samus pull the rest of it off of her. "So whats new Samus?" he asked.

"Oh, you know, fight myself in the simulater, lose to the simulater, lash out at Barin, get assigned to a mission that I hate."

"Mmm." Derek said as he pulled the last of the stick-net off Samus. "Whats the mission?" Samus opened her mouth but the comm unit rang and cut her off. She walked over to it and keyed the answer button. The image of her younger brother, Renick, appeared. He was twenty-three years old, handsome, a little on the short side, and was currently in studying to be a biologist. "Hi, Samus. Did General Farkus tell you about the mission?" Samus nodded. "Yes, he did." Renick smiled. "Good, I wanted to tell you that we'll be leaving a little sooner than expected." Samus cocked her head to one side. "How soon?"

Renick looked at his wrist chrono. "In about one hour. I'm on my way to the IBHA space station to pick you up now." Derek looked at Samus, wondering what was going on. Samus was silent for a moment. She had just heard about the mission five minutes ago and now they had to leave ahead of schedule. "Why do we have to leave so soon?" Renick's smile faded. "Because the professors I lied to have caught on to what I'm doing. They thaught I was going to study the life cycle of the Burion Bog-Snake. They tried to keep me on school grounds but I was already gone before they could do anything."

"What ARE you studying anyway Renick?" Derek asked curiously. "Metroids." Renick said plainly and then cut off the transmission.