~~~~~Chapter 3~~~~~~

Hal felt like he was floating. There was no up, there was no down. It was relaxing. Everything was dark, everything was silent.

"Hey…"

Well, almost everything was silent. There was a voice. It seemed vaguely familiar, but Hal's mind felt as much like it was floating as his body did. He couldn't quite place it.

"Hey."

The voice was getting louder. And more obnoxious. The darkness around Hal was slowly brightening, now a middle sort of grey instead of the pitch-black it had been a few seconds ago. The relaxing floating feeling was going away, and Hal grimaced.

"HEY!"

With a sudden enormous flinch, Hal's eyes flew open and then were squeezed shut as a bright light invaded his vision.

"Welcome back to the world of the conscious." It was the same voice as before, only now he could identify it. Sure enough, when Hal opened his eyes again, blinking to adjust, he was looking at Kilowog.

"Urrrgh." Hal was, perhaps, not as eloquent as he meant to be. He struggled to sit up from his place laying on the floor, but his muscles were all cramped and painful.

"Do not strain yourself, Lantern Hal," he could hear Aya say, and she soon walked into his line of sight. "Your muscular system is still being affected by the electric weapon they used to over-take us."

"How can I still understand Kilowog?" Hal inquired, relaxing back onto the floor.

"Since I am powered by the same Green Lantern power battery that powers the Interceptor, I am able to run a similar universal translator program as the rings. There will be a slight time delay in the translation, but it will only be a few nanoseconds."

"Handy," Hal said, finally sitting up with help from Kilowog. "So they snuck up on us? How?" Aya looked down.

"I…I only performed a general location scan for Sergeant Kilowog's ring energy," she explained, "It gives a broad location, a little less than a square mile, in which the ring can be found. It is more effective for tracking a moving ring, as we were. If I had pinpointed the ring exactly I would have been able to sense them moving behind us, but it would have taken longer for us to find this cavern in the first place as I would have had to continually recalibrate the scans."

"That's fine, Aya," Hal replied, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "But now we have to figure a way out of this."

"Good luck," Kilowog grunted. "I've been trying to break the bars for the past however long it's been. This rock is weird, Jordan. Every time I get so much as a chip off of one, it grows back over itself."

"This mineral is strange," Aya admitted. "I do not believe I have data on anything like it." They fell quiet for a while, each contemplating the position they found themselves in.

"Aya, can you contact the Interceptor?" Hal spoke up finally.

"Yes, but the signal may be interrupted slightly by the cavern."

"Good. We'll see if we can break a bar, but if that doesn't work in the next…oh, half an hour, then we can call in the ace up our sleeves."

"What is taking them so long?" Razer had long since finished cleaning up and was back wearing his ring and uniform, lounging at the table in the main common room.

"It can't possibly take this long to find that big oaf." He sighed deeply, immensely bored. Then he stood suddenly and began walking briskly towards the bridge of the ship. Anxiously, the Red Lantern moved to the main window and scanned the jungle outside, searching for any sign that his fellow crewmembers were returning. This entire planet set him on edge and he did not like it. There was something that was just…off about it. Initially he had put it up frayed nerves from the less than stellar welcome that had been their crash landing. But now he was sure it was something about the planet itself.

"Int…zer…o…py…?" A crackling signal coming through the ship's instruments startled him a bit; he had been too intent focusing on the jungles outside. Quickly he moved to the panel and adjusted a few settings.

"This is the Interceptor, say again," he spoke into the communications array. "Repeat, I cannot hear you."

"Razer…" this time he could identify Aya's voice amongst the static, but it sounded like she was whispering.

"Aya, what's going on?"

"We…run int…some illegal…ining…" Razer continued to adjust the settings, trying to strengthen the signal as best he could. "Repeat…we have run into an illegal mining operation and were ambushed. Lanterns Hal and Kilowog have had their rings taken."

"Copy. Where are you located?"

"We are being held…a large cell built within a natural cavern. Transmitting approximate coordin…s now." A map of the planet opened and the location of the Interceptor was marked by a small green pinpoint. The map rotated back and forth a few times before settling on a small point in the jungle a fair distance from the ship. Razer removed a small circular device from the console and turned it on, producing a small copy of the same map.

"I'm on my way."

"Razer…areful. They are planning to…id the Interceptor in a few hours." Despite the static, Razer could guess quite easily what was being planned by these illegal miners.

"I understand," he responded, "I'll leave them a welcome present or two in case we aren't fast enough to return."

"AUGH, what even is this stuff!" Kilowog growled from where he was still trying to break the stone bars. They were thick, each almost the same size around as his arm, and they were rooted well to the floor and ceiling of the cavern recess. Not to mention that every time even the slightest hint of damage was done to them, the strange black mineral would repair itself.

"What I want to know is how they're even mining it!" Hal said, exasperated.

"That would be thanks to me." The three turned to the entrance to their cell. Slithering forward, rough stomach scales rasping against the cavern floor, came Rallus.

"And who, exactly, would you be?" Hal asked. "And why are you wearing our rings?" The other two in the cell immediately snapped their gaze to the two matching rings on the snake-creature's hand. Rallus lifted his hand and regarded the rings with an almost loving glance.

"I am Rallus, foreman of this little mining outfit," he answered with a sneer. "And these are my rings now, Green Lanterns. They will remain that way."

"You better watch yourself, scales," Kilowog growled. "When we get out of here-" But his threat was cut off by a horrible gurgling laugh from Rallus.

"When you get out? That's laughable! There's not even an 'if' you get out, Bolovaxian." Rallus grinned, wider than he should have been able, showing off needle-like teeth and a pair of hinged over-sized fangs. With a deep breath, Rallus turned to face a wall covered in the black mineral. There was a hiss and two streams of toxic-green spat from holes in his fangs. Where it impacted the wall sizzled and burned, the liquid eating its way quickly into the wall, which did not repair itself.

"My venom is more than enough to eat through this rock," the snake-creature said, turning back to his captives. "We use it as a part of the mining process. And, we all wield weapons that utilize its properties as well. You'll become plenty acquainted with them once this shift is over." He turned around and slithered away, pointing to the workers he had come by with, clearly assigning them as guards in front of the entrance to the recess the cell was located in.

"I hate it when villains gloat," Hal intoned dryly.

"The kid better get here soon," Kilowog muttered. "I don't want to find out what he was planning when he said we'd 'become plenty acquainted' with that acid of his."

"Razer will arrive soon," Aya said, sounding very sure.

She was, as it turns out, exactly right.

"Wait, do you guys hear that?" Hal piped up, about 15 minutes after Rallus left. The other two looked up and listened. There was a soft rustling sound and the slightest noise of rocks shifting.

"Where is it coming from?" Kilowog asked. The noise continued to grow louder, and became interspersed with what sounded vaguely like muffled curses.

"I believe it is coming from there," Aya said, pointing to a large crack in the wall just outside their cell.

"That leads to the outside?" Kilowog asked, looking to the others. Hal shrugged.

"Yes," said a muffled voice from just inside the fissure. "It does. OOF!" Razer finally emerged, tripping forward a little with the forward force he had been pushing himself through with.

"Why were you crawling around in there?" It was Hal's turn to ask questions.

"All of the other entrances are guarded, heavily," Razer answered, straightening up and moving over to examine the bars. "And each of those guards is armed to the teeth."

"And…why are you in your civilian clothes?" came Hal's next question. Razer looked down to his clothes, then back up at Hal with the blank look of someone who is trying not to look incredibly embarrassed.

"My armor kept getting caught on things when I tried to make my way through possibly the thickest jungle ever to exist," he admitted. "I am not used to navigating jungles."

"Why didn't you fly over the jungle?"

"I did until I came close to this cavern. Then I decided that perhaps stealth was the better option. Judging by the guards, I'd say was right." He shot Hal an exasperated look. "Now are you going to interrogate me further, or should I focus on getting you out of here."

"We very much appreciate your assistance, Razer," Aya said. Razer glanced at her and then away, moving a few feet away from the bars.

"Stand back," he said, aiming his ring at the bars.

"Razer, no!" the imprisoned three cried, but it was too late. With a flash of red, he was not only in his uniform again, but a bolt of red energy was flying towards the bars. The three in the cell threw themselves onto the ground. Razer wondered what they were doing, but soon it became painfully obvious. Upon hitting the mysterious black mineral, the bolt of red energy was reflected and refracted, splitting into multiple smaller bolts and ricocheting through the cavern recess. He had a lovely split second of blind panic before instinct also sent him ducking to the ground just in time to avoid being hit by at least three of his reflected shots from various directions. Soon the ricocheting bolts dissipated or hit plain dirt or rock as opposed to the black mineral.

"WHAT," Razer snarled, then took a deep breath and composed himself a bit. "What was that?"

"We should have warned you about that sooner," Kilowog admitted, pushing himself off the floor.

"I attempted escape via the same method earlier," Aya said. "We soon discovered that constructs that touch this mineral are reflected and refracted. Any constructs, including shields."

"Well then how, exactly, do you expect me to get you out!" A chorus of confused yells echoed back through the tunnels. It seems the light show had alerted the guards and miners that something was going on.

"Acidic substances seem to affect the mineral in a more effective manner than constructs and or energy," Aya supplied helpfully.

"A-acid?" Hal's ears must have been mistaken, because he could have sworn he heard Razer stammer.

"Yes," Aya replied. "The foreman, Rallus, employs acidic venom." She gestured to the hole Rallus had burned into the wall earlier. Razer grimaced.

"I see," the Red Lantern muttered. "I have…an idea. Stand over there and well back from the bars and turn around." The three moved obediently to the side as far as they could, but only Aya turned around fully.

"Why are you not turning around?" she inquired of the Lanterns next to her.

"I want to see what he's up to," Hal answered and Kilowog nodded in agreement. Razer had noticed their gaze and was hesitating slightly. The sound of approaching guards was getting louder by the second.

"Hurry up, kid," Kilowog said. Razer clenched his jaw and glared daggers at the drill sergeant.

"Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you."