It was raining again, but in their current shapes, neither Bio-freezer nor Felinos felt the cold drops of water pelting them mercilessly. They stood, each holding a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses, in front of the row of graves in the back of the house where they were staying. It was the only real place where they could be safe, so despite all of the bad memories that it now held, the two Lost Numbers continued to stay.
Felinos, by silent consensus, was the first to start laying out the flowers that he had brought, his large, viciously clawed hands surprisingly gentle as he went about his task. Once Felinos was done, Bio-freezer stepped forward as Felinos stepped back. Each grave now had two roses resting on it. Looking over all of the elegantly carved wooden grave markers, the eyes of the two Lost Units rested almost instinctively on the one that was different from all of the others.
What made that particular marker stand out so clearly was the fact that while all of the others were carved with elegant precision, that one had been written on with a black permanent marker. It wasn't that the two Lost Number Zoanoids didn't care about their lost comrade; it was just that neither of them possessed even a fraction of her woodcarving skill. Looking over Danielle Sorenson's grave marker, Bio-freezer and Felinos couldn't help but wish that she had survived her own Lost Unit processing, as well.
"They didn't deserve this," Felinos muttered sadly, his catlike eyes downcast.
"Yeah. But then, neither did we," Bio-freezer muttered.
Both Lost Units, standing next to one another in the pouring rain, sighed as they continued to stare at the graves that held the remains of their friends, neither at all bothered by the rain. Felinos didn't feel the cold, and the low temperature was almost comfortable for Bio-freezer.
"So what do we do now?" Felinos asked, just to fill the silence.
"We do what the others would have wanted us to do: we fight Chronos."
"That's what I thought you were going to say," Felinos muttered, grinning and displaying his mouthful of slashing, inch-long teeth.
The two Lost Units headed back into the house once they had finished paying their respects.
XxXxXxX
Back at Chronos, in one of the more well appointed rooms within the sprawling underground area of the Dead Sea Plant, one of the only real survivors of the Mt. Minakami disaster was resting; the doctors and other scientists who had survived the cataclysm had all been killed one way or another after the interrogation at Cloud Tower. Hearing the door to his room being pushed open, the black-haired man lying on the room's only bed turned to look towards it, wondering who had come to visit him.
"How are you feeling this morning, Zektor?" an unassuming-looking woman asked as she walked into his room; Zektor noticed that she was carrying a clipboard.
"My bandages itch, my butt hurts, and I'm bored," the former leader of the Hyper Zoanoid Team Five grumbled.
"I can see how that would be a problem for someone like you," she commiserated, and Zektor saw that she was looking at the pitiful stump of his left leg.
"What type are you?" Zektor asked sharply, not wanting to deal with pity from a human if he could help it.
"Sharru," the woman—or rather, the female Zoanoid—answered said calmly.
"You're a Sharru?" Zektor asked, looking at the woman more closely. He noticed that she had short black hair, though a little tuft of silver was visible at the front. "I've worked with your type a few times," Zektor said appreciatively. "Even faster than Zancrus, and, as a bonus, your type actually has hands," he snickered, and Sharru, seeing the humor, laughed herself. "So, did you just come in to check up on the invalid, or was there something you wanted?"
"Dr. Balkus wanted me to update you on the status of your request," Sharru said as she walked over to Zektor's bed and presented him with the clipboard.
"I see the doc took my request for extra weaponry seriously." Zektor chuckled again as he looked over all the notations that Dr. Balkus had made on the paper that was attached to the clipboard. "I'm going to be sure to be able to do some serious damage to that bastard Zoanoid-eater with these. I just hope he doesn't manage to get the drop on me again."
"That's one of the things that Dr. Balkus wanted me to tell you about," Sharru said. "He's provided you with a form of defense against the Aptom virus."
"Please tell me you're not just pulling my leg," Zektor said, an eager grin spreading across his face.
"No; I'm just reporting what Dr. Balkus told me."
"Well, if the doc says it, then I know I can count on it. Come on—let's go." Zektor gestured for Sharru to give him his crutch. "I want to thank him personally."
Nodding, Sharru stepped over to the table by Zektor's bed and plucked the Hyper Zoanoid's crutches from their resting place. Handing them to the former leader of the Hyper Zoanoid Team Five, Sharru watched as he made an effort to get back to his feet, almost tempted to offer him some help, but she clearly remembered how proud the old Hypers were. Zektor probably wouldn't want her help in any case.
Once he was back on his feet, Sharru walked back to the door and opened it for both of them, waiting until Zektor had made it out the door before she turned and followed him. Closing the door once she had made it out of Zektor's room, Sharru caught up to the injured Hyper Zoanoid and wordlessly accompanied him to Dr. Balkus' office. There had been something else that Dr. Balkus had wanted her to report to Zektor—Sharru was almost certain of it, but at the moment was unable to recall just what that extra piece of information had been. And Zektor's happiness had an infectious quality about it. Watching him practically skipping down the corridor with that big cat-that-ate-the-canary grin on his face, Sharru forgot all about the fact that she had been ordered to report another fact to Zektor along with the modifications that Dr. Balkus wanted to make to his body.