SOS chapter 6

Disclaimer: No, no, absolutely not.

Hey, sorry this is so late, and I hope there are still some people reading this. I love this story, and I'm seriously trying to make chapters more frequent and longer. Thanks for waiting, and enjoy!

"Though she may be your enemy, do not let that fact blind you to what she is; a sister."

Nameless Mier-Ta priestess

Four Years Ago

Ben jolted awake. He couldn't remember what his dream had been about, and knew only that his heart was racing and the muscles in his legs were tingling as if he had been running. He had a blank moment where he looked up at a ceiling which was too gray and much too high, and then the proceeding day came rushing back. Warily, he put his hand up and felt the unfamiliar metal encircling his neck.

Still here.

He sat up on the bed rather quickly and ran a hand through his hair. It wasn't like him to just sit here and wait for things to happen. It was pretty clear by now that that strategy wasn't working very well. There had to be a way to get this thing off, or at least a way to fight its influence somehow. Maybe Grandpa and Gwen would come to his rescue, and maybe they wouldn't. He couldn't just sit here depending on them and doing nothing.

Throwing back the covers, Ben hopped down off of the bed. He paused suddenly. Had he used the covers last night? He didn't remember covering himself, but there they lay, crumpled up at the foot of the bed. Then again, he had been pretty out of it when he went to bed. He must have used them and forgotten.

Dismissing the question from his mind, Ben hunted down his shoes and slipped them on. When he finished he glanced towards the door and saw that someone must have been there while he was asleep. The metal casserole-thing from last night had been removed, and another one was sitting in its place. He would have thought that it was the same one, except it was a different colour; a sort of copper. Ben looked at it, but wasn't quite ready to try eating whatever it contained. He didn't know how long he'd be left alone in here. At least, he couldn't imagine that Vilgax would just stick him in this room and feed him forever. He had to try getting out while he had the time.

He walked to the door. He hadn't done this before. He'd entertained the notion briefly, but the feeling that it was physically incapable of him to walk through it had been too strange. But now he had to try something. In any case, he made it to the door. It was an unpleasant feeling, being so near to something impossible. He felt like he was approaching a dangerous precipice. He put his hand on the handle. He wondered whether it was locked.

If it isn't, I'm just going to open it and look out, he thought. He felt that he had to justify his actions to himself. The door handle was long and slightly thick for his hand. It had a raised section that felt like rubber. You were supposed to twist that to open the door. He twisted it the way he had seen the robots do. It turned. He pushed on the door with both hands. It was heavy, but slid smoothly, sideways so that it slid into the right hand wall, and he had no trouble pushing it halfway open.

Well, it was open.

And he couldn't walk through it.

He couldn't so much as put one foot out into the corridor outside.

For a moment he stood dumbly on the threshold, and then he turned and abruptly slammed the door shut again.

The least Vilgax could have done was to lock it. Then he would at any rate have been spared that awful feeling. There was no way to work against the influence, because it wasn't influence. It was like everything the maniac ordered him to do instantly became a fundamental law of the universe.

Ben found that he was breathing heavily, and his chest felt hot and tight. He swallowed hard and stared fixedly at the high, gray ceiling for a moment.

So that wasn't going to work. The only other thing he could think of was to get the collar off. Even if he did figure out what Vilgax was up to, it wouldn't help him while this thing was on. Absently, he put one hand up and closed his fingers around the metal band. It seemed pretty sturdy, and he had a feeling his neck would give out before he could break it. He would have to find something to cut or file it. Too bad I can't have Gwen mail me a saw inside a cake. He almost chuckled. Sort of.

What did he have to work with? Well, it would have to be things that he could find in this room, since…it would have to be things that he could find in this room. And the bathroom, he remembered. And there wasn't a lot in either room. He decided to take inventory.

His 'bedroom' was pretty bare. First, there was the bed. This seemed to be built directly into the wall of the room. Look as he might, Ben couldn't find any loose parts that he could pull off of the bed to use for anything. It was just a hunk of metal with a mattress on top. The room had a very high ceiling from Ben's perspective, though he remembered that Vilgax had only had a foot or two of clearance for his head. There were definitely some kind of lights running around the edges of the ceiling, but there was no way for him to get close enough to examine them, and he couldn't use the omnitrix to get near them anyway. He didn't even try climbing up on the bed; it wasn't nearly high enough. There were no decorations on the walls or floor as he had previously noticed, and the shelf under the bed contained only the folded pajamas. The bathroom was equally disappointing. He even examined the toilet paper holder for movable parts, but some jerk had built it like a weird metal box with the toilet paper in the middle, and it was just as attached to the wall as the bed had been. The only remotely promising things he could find were the door handles. If he could figure out a way to detach them they might be useful. They didn't look very sharp, but He didn't have a lot of options at this point.

By now he was feeling quite hungry, but he was also painfully aware of the passing time. He didn't have a way to tell time, but it couldn't be too much longer until Vilgax came to do something worse to him, so he got to work on the door handles. He tackled the one on the bathroom door first. Once again, it seemed to be soldered invisibly into the metal of the door, but it was his best option, so he braced himself against the door and started pulling. It hurt his hands, but he tugged and twisted, jerking his hands back and forth on the metal, trying to find some way to make it give. He wished he had four arms' strength, or even Gwen's strength. He wished this stupid handle would budge. The joints of his hands were sore and the skin was rubbed and red, but he felt the panic trickle through his chest and he kept pulling.

The handle was a thin piece of metal, and it might have budged eventually, but Ben had been correct; he didn't have a lot of time.

The door slid open behind him, and Ben stopped pulling on the door handle. Vilgax was back.

As before, the alien's presence made the room feel very small. Ben clenched his hands, feeling the skin pull painfully.

The alien's face was expressionless, but several tentacles writhed, (in anger?), and then were still. Ben glared back defiantly. He was a bit worked up to think of pretending not to be trying something, even if it wasn't obvious that he was. Vilgax's eyes flicked to Ben's clenched hands, but then he turned away.

"Follow me boy," Vilgax ordered, and then he walked down the corridor without looking behind him.

No reason for the robots anymore I guess, Ben thought as he followed obediently. He walked through the door, the door he had desperately tried to step through not fifteen minutes before, and he found himself wishing his steps were as hesitant as he felt. There was no prohibition on him now to prevent him from speaking, but there was nothing he could say to the inscrutable creature in front of him. All he could do now was pretend he didn't feel the cold snake of fear coiling through his gut. He put one hand up to his neck as he walked, and absently ran a finger along the smooth metal, and allowed himself to continue musing over ways to get it off.

Day two.

Vilgax glanced back at the young human trailing behind him. He was small and thin, even for his young age. His head twisted from side to side, eyes flickering about him as though memorizing their rout. Tennyson's grandson. Tennyson had always been a kiertosh in Vilgax's engine. He hated the meddling human; had contemplated the pleasure inherent in crushing the life from the old man's body and watching as the light faded from his eyes.

But the old man was merely an annoyance; a dangerous annoyance, but one that would be dealt with in time. Tennyson was an annoyance, but Ben was a prize.

Back when he first discovered the boy's possession of the omnitrix, Vilgax had thought of nothing but how he could destroy the human and gain control of the artifact. Ben's consistent success in their battles had infuriated him. Now it was not merely a human who was thwarting him, but a child, and Tennyson's relation to drive the grav-torch in even deeper. And this child had almost killed him in their first battle. In fact, had it not been for Trisaara, Vilgax's first mate, the warlord would have escaped with his life and nothing else. It was Trisaara who had helped many of the crew to escape from the failing ship, and it was she who had retrieved the information from the main lab. That information had felt like a curse when Vilgax had examined it, but never doing so would have been much worse.

Looking back at Ben now, Vilgax felt a tentacle twitch at the human's attempt to hide his fear. He could practically see the emotion emanating from the boy. The unknown was often the most frightening, and Ben was behaving very well considering. Still, to Vilgax's eyes, the boy looked incredibly vulnerable. Vilgax could order him to do anything and he knew it though, the warlord thought, he likely hadn't yet realized all of the implications of that yet. And when the boy was his enemy, it was easy for Vilgax to forget just how young he really was. His ingenuity, his cockiness and seeming invincibility made him seem much older, but he really was merely a child; a very young, very frightened child who wanted to be anywhere else but here.

They rounded a corridor, and Vilgax stopped in front of the door to the infirmary. He touched a panel on the wall with one claw, and watched the door slide open in response. Of course, most of what he had planned for the boy needed to wait until they reached Cortestor, the nearest of Vilgax's planets, but he needed to enter Ben's physical statistics into the medical computers and make sure the boy was healthy. If he had any dormant illnesses Vilgax needed to know.

He had originally planned to leave the boy alone in his room for a while longer, but had decided against it when he saw Ben's attempts to loosen the door handle. He was getting panicky, the damage to his hands was evidence enough of that, and Vilgax did not want him to harm himself in his fear. Better to give him something else to think about. Of course, he could simply order the boy not to hurt himself, but that would merely have the effect of increasing his inner panic without giving him an outlet for it. It made sense to give him freedom as far as he could.

Ben had been trying to memorize their rout through the ship. He wanted to know as much as he could about the ship's layout in case he did manage to escape and had to navigate the corridors. In spite of his situation, how found himself calming slightly as they walked. At least something was happening. At the same time, he tried to ignore the knowledge that he couldn't stop walking, or even try to. It was difficult, and rather like trying not to think about the word hippopotamus.

Vilgax stopped, so Ben did too.

They were in front of a large door, though this description seemed rather redundant at this point. The ship was obviously built to accommodate Vilgax's stature, and Ben had yet to see a room, corridor or door that was not large.

Vilgax touched something on the wall, and the door slid smoothly open to reveal a (large) room with light gray walls that looked impossibly clean. The light in this room was brighter than Ben had seen in the rest of the ship, and as they walked inside Ben wrinkled his nose, smelling a faint scent something like disinfectant.

There was a tall, thin alien seated at a beige desk that looked like it was made out of spongy stone. The alien had very large eyes that stretched around the sides of its head. Thin gray tentacles sprouted from the dark brown skin of its head and down its back. These were kept out of its face by what looked like black barrettes. It had a very small mouth, no nose that Ben could see, and a pronounced chin. It wore a light gray smock of some kind that began just below its long, slender neck and presumably extended down its body, although Ben couldn't see anything behind the desk. Its lower body and feet were likewise hidden from view. Behind the alien, Ben could see several white table-shaped protrusions emerging from the floor, and behind them the wall seemed to be lined with what looked like huge fish tanks of different shapes and sizes. Behind the tanks, the room twisted and seemed to continue, although he could see no more of it.

When they entered, the alien looked up from the data pad it seemed to be reading, and made a noise like about twenty crickets chirping at once. It then rose and inclined its head gracefully.

"What may I do for you Warlord?" it asked. Its voice was high and sweet, and also seemed to carry a trill just below the surface.

"You will record this human's biorhythms, Miertoh, and check him for illness," Vilgax answered. His voice, always raspy, seemed even harsher after the musical speech of the new alien. The alien, Miertoh?, rose from its seat and gave Ben a once-over with its large eyes.

"Human?" it enquired.

Vilgax didn't say anything in answer, but one of his tentacles twitched to the side.

"Very well," Miertoh said. "You can leave him with me if you like."

"I will wait," Vilgax said.

"Very well," Miertoh said again. It blinked, and Ben saw two sets of eyelids, an inner and an outer one, slide closed and then open again. He looked away, feeling self-conscious. And what exactly did 'record his biorhythms' mean? Once again, he was in a position where he would simply have to wait and find out.

The tests did not take long. He stood in an oddly shaped alcove while different coloured lights ran over his body for several minutes, and that was it. If Vilgax hadn't been there, Ben would have tried to talk to Miertoh, than maybe he could have found out something useful, or at least talk to someone. Maybe that was why Vilgax insisted on staying. Was he afraid that Ben might find a way out after all?

As they left the room, Ben glanced back at Miertoh, but the alien was studying its data pad and didn't seem to notice him.

They walked back the same way. Didn't Vilgax have more important things to do than take Ben to a doctor's office? Didn't he have a ship to run or some planet to subjugate or something? Couldn't he have just ordered Ben to go to Miertoh's office and not cause any trouble or something? He certainly wasn't here to provide company. All through the journey, Vilgax was silent. The silence felt slightly oppressive by now, and Ben was almost tempted to start asking some of his questions to break the silence, little as he expected answers.

They halted in front of Ben's cell. Guess that's it for the tour, Ben thought wryly.

To his surprise, Vilgax did not merely order him into the cell and then leave. Instead, he seemed to be studying the young human where he stood by the door.

"Uh, what are you looking at me for?" Ben asked uncomfortably.

In response, Vilgax's eyes narrowed and he turned away slightly, tentacles twitching.

"Go into your room and remain there child," he ordered.

"Glad we had this chance to talk." Ben walked through the door, but he couldn't stop the snide remark. At least it made him feel a little better, though Vilgax didn't even appear to notice it.

The door slid closed, hiding the alien from view, and Ben was alone again. He crossed his arms and glared at the empty cell. He noticed the food container on the floor, but his hunger had receded somewhat, and the idea of digging through the container to see what it contained was not an attractive one. He put a hand up to his neck again and wrapped his hand around the collar, pulling it as far away from his neck as it would go, and then let his hand fall back to his side.

Thanks for reading gang! Next chapter should bring some more Vilgax narration, and solve some more mysteries.

See you all soon.