Chapter 19: The Past Revisited

Jak's mind felt dizzy making her swoon a bit in her seat. As her eyes focus she found beakers, tubes and other science items that she recognized and never wanted to see again. "Dr. Aldoza!" came a cry nearby. Turning around Jak found herself face to face with a female ottsel dressed in a scientist's jacket, blue jeans and a white top. She was about to ask what was going on when the ottsel grabbed her pawed hand.

Wait. Jak looked at her hand. Pawed hand? Claws attached to each finger. An eye twitched. Just what I need. Where's Daxter? She wondered as she felt a tug on her arm.

"We've got to go!" The unknown female yelled as she practically dragged Jak through the halls. "Ze-dura, how long before Mar's team gets here!" The woman yelled.

A holo of a young male ottsel appeared. "One hour thirty minutes." The holo avatar stated. "According my data, Errol's bombardment will continue well into the night if we don't stop it soon. I've also gathered the other AI cells and have placed them into a capsule that'll take off in the next ten minutes to the moon base."

Mar? Jak thought as suddenly the ceiling collapsed and suddenly gasped as he saw a machine-like creature that had dark eco spread across its exoskeleton like a second skin. It lifted its large hand that changed into a blaster and charge the weapon. Jak, having fallen onto her butt, stood quickly and grabbed the stunned girl's hand and ran the opposite way. She skidded to a stop and jumped into an open air duck with the girl following. Seconds later the darkened space lit up as the blaster canon shot the super-heated material. They were lucky, as it didn't seem to notice that it had missed its target.

Panting slightly she pulled her body along the metal surface, her tail thumping as it came into contact with the walls of the air duck. Finding another room she pushed her hands against the vent and opened it. As she crawled out, she jumped onto the cupboard and waited for her companion. Once the young ottsel jumped out after her the two made their way off of the cupboard and ran out of the room, when Jak saw her reflection on the glass surface of the door. Eyes widening as he looked at the green blonde haired creature in front of her. Her fur was the normal reddish/orange and powder puff yellow colors. On her head she had green blonde hair that was pulled into a low ponytail and she wore tiny spectacle glasses, a lab coat, black jeans and white top. This wasn't her. Who the heck was she? Shaking her head she decided to mull over this later and ran after the young woman who had gone on ahead of her.

Turning a corner she heard screams and saw another one of those machines killing dozens of ottsels that were running every which way, trying to escape death. Jak shook her head and ran, leaving them behind. Finding a catwalk she raced across it to the door on the other side. Looking around she saw a terminal blinking. Walking up to it a holo with the avatar of the AI Ze-dura appeared.

"Dr. Aldoza, how may I be of service?" The AI inquired.

Suddenly a voice that didn't belong to Jak spoke from her lips. "Activate Agent Zero with activation code Zero, eight, one, Alpha, Beta, Omega, four."

"Activation code accepted," the AI replied. "Shuttle twelve is ready for you and you assistant."

"I've lost Nara," the Dr. replied. "How long until the gas takes over the station?"

"Nine minutes forty-two seconds," the AI once again replied.

"Open all doors to the shuttles," she said. "Ensure that all of my companions who are capable of making it, get into those shuttles." She turned to a locker that was in the room.

"What about you Doctor?" the AI inquired, sounding actually worried. "We found life forms on this planet. We cannot allow Errol or his machines to destroy their world," she said as she pulled a pistol from the locker and sat it down on a table before grabbing the armor inside and suiting up. Grabbing a metal band she placed it on her head and pressed a button on the side, it then transformed into a helmet with a visor that went around her eyes. Walking up to the terminal she spoke. "Ready yourself for transfer." As she said this she placed her armored hand over the terminal. An electrical current connected with her palm and transferred the AI into her armored suit. "Ze-dura?" she questioned and saw the AI's avatar up in the corner of her visor's hud.

"Download complete." Ze-dura stated. "I've placed ninety percent of myself into hibernation mode. Ten percent of me should be able to help you escape or give you tips as we fight. I've also placed a huge virus into the system should anyone but myself be put into the terminals on the base."

"Good." The doctor picked up her pistol and it's ammo before exiting the room and shooting at the dark eco infused monsters. The red eco bullets hit the major joints of the machines before causing them to explode. "Explosive ammunitions," she muttered before she heard Ze-dura chuckle in her ear. "A new prototype that's been in the making for super soldiers like Mar and his team."

"My brother seems to love these upgrades a lot," she stated as she took aim and began shooting four of the six machines in the room. This gave the survivors a chance to run to the shuttles that would take them off of the planet.

Jak felt her body lurch forward as she sprang into a run. Rushing passed the downed bodies, she grabbed ammo when she could and then started shooting the remaining enemies until they too fell down into a non-operating mode. Her feet barely touched the floor as she pushed herself to move faster, dodge enemy fire and sliding against the floor surface as she made it through a closing door and into the shuttle hanger. Unfortunately, most of the shuttles had already taken off.

"Doctor!" She twirled around in time to miss being shot by her own assistant.

"Nara, why are you-" she yelled from behind a few containers.

"I'm working for my master Errol," Nara stated calmly, the metal components on her face were visible.

"You've become unnatural Nara." Aldoza switched mods on her pistol which suddenly had a sniper mode added to it with a scope. Kneeling down she looked through the scope and shot one of the explosive rounds into the knee of her new opponent, she quickly turned away as the round blew Nara's legs out from under her. Walking up to the now badly injured half ottsel, half machine she saw Nara trying to reach her weapon. "This is why this war must stop," she said. "Errol and his group are wrong in their thinking. Machines won't lengthen our days. Machines aren't meant to last forever. The dark eco that is infused with your body will eventually override the machine part and take on a personality of its own. Killing you and becoming something dark. I will find a way of destroying this."

Nara chuckled. "Errol will stop you and your brother Mar."

"Perhaps," Aldoza stated. "But perhaps, and more than likely, we'll kill each other, destroy our civilization and this will open the way for the next species to evolve and make their own mistakes. But if, by chance Errol survives with even a tenth of his army, I will ensure that the species after us has a fighting chance! I will make sure that his evil doesn't last forever."

"Evil?" Nara questioned, her red machine eye starring at her as the dark eco that had been inside her shell of her body leaked around her. "Who are you to judge what is evil and what is not? Was it not you that suggested in sharing genes with those primitives? To allow them to use eco?"

A smile graced Aldoza's lips. "We never shared our genes. As it turned out they already had the gene. We just switch it on in some." She aimed her gun at Nara, switching mods with a push of a button, returning the gun back to a pistol form. "In a few hundred or thousand years they will have Channelers among them and I believe there will one day be one among them all that'll be a hero and stop all this madness, but you won't see this." She shot her assistant, her head making a ding sound as the bullet went through a metal she'll that was around the skull, killing her. Turning, the doctor left the hangar and got into a shuttle and launched it.

"Doctor?" came her AI companion's voice through her helmets speakers. "The data suggests that what you've said might never even happen. That a Channeler evolving from these elves will be as rare as seeing a supernova."

"I have faith," she said, her voice sounding tired. Looking down she saw that Nara's one and only shot had hit home. "I thought she missed."

"Doctor," the AI said with regret in its voice.

"I have a mission for you Ze-dura." She placed her hand over the terminal near the flight controls. "I want you to show what happened back there to whoever finds you. I also want you to give them a message. So please record this into your data banks." The AI nodded. "To whomever finds this recording: My name is Dr. Nim Aldoza. I am a scientist among thousands of others. My job was to study the species upon this planet. Help them evolve and to integrate them into our society. I, however, saw potential in them. I saw a species that could one day become something more than what we are. I activated the Channeler gene in twenty-five hundred subjects and then released them. Of these subjects I can see them becoming like our own soldiers. I've also, with my brother's help, have ensured that if these genes do not evolve the way I have hoped, secured a secondary measure in which Mar himself will self-evolve into an elf and protect this species from Errol and his people." She gasped as her wound bled even more. "Errol was once one of us. He was the first to touch the substance that is dark eco, but he began to go mad only days later. After a year the madness had fully taken over. He began amassing followers who began to manipulate their bodies by adding machine parts to them in hope of lengthening their lives even further than what our gene therapy does." She closed her eyes. "Our home world was destroyed by his people and the war they started there when our leaders ordered him and his followers to stop what they were doing. Over the last ten years, twelve of our thirty colony worlds have been destroyed in this war. This world and its people should be left out of our squabble, but I fear they will not be. So I leave this warning: If and when Errol appears, unite as one to destroy him. It will be your only hope in stopping a massacre. End recording."

"Jak!" Jak's ears rang as she heard Daxter's voice above her. His worried look had him kneeing over her form.

"Dax," she said his name before suddenly everything she'd seen came back to the fore front.

"What happened?" Daxter asked as he looked her over. "One moment you were standing and the next you screamed in pain and fainted."

Jak looked at the oracle in front of her. "It showed me a recording made by Mar's species." Her eyes were wide with the realization of what Mar's kind had looked like. "Dax, you're never gonna believe what they looked like."

"Eh?" Daxter questioned as he cocked his head at her.

Suddenly the whirling of the machine before them caught their attention. Jak frown and wondered if possibly. "Ze-dura," she said, causing the machine to go quiet before suddenly a holo appeared of an elfin man with short brown hair, tan pants and white shirt appeared before her." He smiled at the duo. "You showed me that, why?"

The AI was silent for a moment. "You are the one my mistress had been waiting for," he said with sadness in his voice.

"What happened to her?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"I brought the ship to this fortress. I activated the others that were here at the time. They worked to save her, but the bleeding was too much. She died on the table in the ER." He looked sad. "She was my mistress and friend." Jak nodded. "I then placed the residents in this place into a deep sleep. I then monitored your species and cloaked this place from the war. I saw Mar turn himself into one of your kind. I saw Errol fight him, loose, but he did not die. Instead he with his flagship along with his science ship, the Daystar, vanished from the system. For the last several hundred years they've been gone. My creators left, but those who were worried that Errol would return, stayed with Mar. Mar ended up having to protect this world from Errol's monsters, the metal heads. As Mar protected the world from them, his soldiers went into cryo sleep. My probes tell me they're waking." He looked at her. "They're waking because the Daystar has returned which means Errol isn't far behind." He smiled as he activated the lights which allowed Jak and Daxter to see where they were and found a cavernous place filled with computers and cryo tanks. "I de-cloaked this fortress and activated beacons left around the world in your elfin clans in order to bring the Channelers together for the battle that will soon occur. Everything here is yours to use. From weapons, to ships, to the data banks and everything I have to offer. This place was built to ensure your kind survives." He smiled. "Unlike the floating cities that were built that would fall from the skies, the fortresses were built to last for eternity." He stood there waiting for the next question.

Jak narrowed her eyes. "Okay," she said as she stood. "What do we do to stop Errol's invasion?" The AI smiled at her causing Daxter to groan as he realized that without knowing it they had just stepped into a big pile of shit that was about to lead them onto their next adventure.

M-Angel: Woohoo! I added a new element into this story! LoL! Sorry for the wait. Been working on my other stories. Hope you enjoyed it!
xoxoangii: Did anyone catch the new element? Brings me back to my late night video game days, lol. Hope you guys liked it!