Chapter 24: Flashes

Back in the academy I thought about going AWOL once. Sometimes you see things you can't unsee, but they're enough to make you stir crazy. Locked in the same environment you witness these things. Escaping never frightened me – it was the aftermath. Where do you go when you're on the run? Who do you turn to? Almost every mission I've been on I've been alone, but never truly alone. Back-up was a phone call away. There's quite a pit in your stomach when that no one picks up on the other end anymore.

Federation Vessel Ranger-Class 64-X - Unknown Sector

"Well, can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing." Excolo tapped his transmitter, willing the beeping alarm away in an instant.

I kept my cannon trained on him. I didn't trust Excolo as much as I didn't trust whatever kind of explosive or trap otherwise he threatened me with that was still resting on his wrist. But he was right, it was all just a ploy in a game. We just had to let each other take our turns.

"Can't say it's the wildest story I've heard, either. But that's not saying much." He kept himself shrugged up against the wall. His breathing seemed to be recuperating. But his white aura was long gone, at least for the time being.

I sat back down in my chair, turning slightly to put the control panels and data feeds in my peripheral while still keeping an eye trained on the dilapidated hunter sprawled before me. Excolo was never a man of pride or honor. They were just words to him. No surprise he didn't mind letting people, or even just me, see him lying about, off his feet.

I could relate. They were just words. Being a hunter plants you firmly in reality. All that matters is survival. Sometimes that requires a paycheck, but often instinct and skill are all you need. Things like pride, honor – those were just keepsakes to feel people feel good. At least, that's what we convinced ourselves. Maybe our own self-deception functioned just as someone's pride or their word – a tradition. Some kind of normalcy or routine that grants control in a usually uncontrollable, unpredictable place.

Excolo threw his words across the room. "So, I hope the encrypted file on that data chip was just a copy and not the original."

"It was, yes." I did my best not to trade barbs. "The original's still in storage here on the ship."

"And it wasn't encrypted along with all the others because you hadn't found it at the same time," Excolo said.

"Correct. There was a gap in the lore I collected on Tallon IV, and this was it. Although I'm sure there's the possibility that even more lore or transcriptions of some kind still exist on the surface or below it that I hadn't found either. But to the best of our knowledge, this was the remainder."

Excolo and I grew up almost side by side as hunters, although he left the Academy long before I did. This was probably the first time we actually shared information. It was always a competition rather than a collaboration, but not this day.

"Well, with everyone and their grandmother with your scent up their nose, I guess there's not much time to go back and be sure," Excolo said. He started to get at least up on to his knees. This time I didn't level my cannon at him.

Once at his feet, Excolo rounded the area outside and then within the cockpit. Not much room to walk in, but he did a few laps until satisfied. Stretching your legs out even in just a cage is better than nothing.

"Why not just decrypt the lore here on the ship?" Did you even listen to me!? What good will it do if it'll bring the Federation right to our doorstep?

Excolo continued. "I mean, sure they might not know where you are right now, but I'm sure they're not far off. Hell, they might actually know where we are at this very moment and you don't even realize it. They could be on their way right now." He shrugged. "I think the pros outweigh the cons here."

I knew there was a possibility that he was right. The Federation could have been a sector away, or even a few hundred miles away, for all I knew. But there was one thing I didn't do and that was make knee-jerk decisions. A convincing first paragraph wasn't enough to make me accept the conclusion. I no longer took Excolo as a threat, even if he had just acted like one, but I wasn't about to start taking suggestions from him. I don't mesh well with back-seat drivers.

"I mean," Excolo continued. "What about your AI? He could have already decrypted the lore and sent that plus our coordinates to the Feds. The ship itself might not be connected to the Federation network, but how do you know the AI itself isn't?

Damn it. Literally the last thing I needed said. This absolute moron! Of course I was contemplating that. I'd been thinking about that ever since Adam told me who…what he really was. I wanted to trust him completely but I just couldn't do that. And then I had that thought rolling around in my head. There really was no way to know if Adam wasn't already connected to the Feds behind my back. He could've been keeping tabs on me for the Feds while stringing me along. I didn't think he'd have anything to gain from that, but that would be thinking of him as a person, not an AI programmed to complete an objective. If his objective was to stay connected and keep tabs on me, then completing that assignment is all he stood to gain and that would be enough for him.

Adam hadn't spoken the entire time Excolo had been on board. He was hearing us - that was certain. But now I knew he was listening to us.

"I hadn't thought of that," I said. "But it does ourselves no good to point fingers when the Feds and the pirates plan to do much more."

"That's if he's even on our team," Excolo said. Our team? The last thing I need is Excolo and Adam getting at odds with one another. And I don't need everyone not trusting one another. That's not how I'll survive this. This is my back-up. I have no one else to call.

"Good thing you're just a bench-warmer." Adam finally spoke. It caught me more than off-guard, so much so that I laughed a bit. "Isn't that right, Lady?"

He hadn't gotten a chuckle out of me in a little while. I hadn't heard him like this in a little while. It was refreshing. This is the Adam I knew. Or maybe the Adam Jr. I knew. For a moment I really was convinced that he was on our side. And that comforted me. Even if I knew it might not have been true.

I held Excolo's eye contact as a sly grin grew across my face. "Yes, that's right Adam." Excolo threw his head back, rolling his eyes in playful disgust.

He stamped his hands on the control panel next to me. "So, you think this will be the key to the Garden then?"

I leaned back in my chair, plated palms cupped behind my head. "Truthfully…probably not. Why would this single lore remnant, scattered randomly amongst the others, have the exact information I need? But I at least need to find out."

"And you think this place exists."

"I think it could. Maybe it did at one point. Now? I don't know. But one thing I learned about the Chozo while growing up: they didn't tell many stories. They kept track of information and data in journals. They wrote history in books. But rarely did they spin a yarn around a campfire. If I heard about something through overhearing conversations, I always felt that whatever they were talking about had to be real. At least in some capacity."

Excolo stood up straight, folding his arms. "But if it was real, wouldn't it be easier to find some kind of record of it or text referring to it? At least outside this piece of lore. Even if it does say something about the Garden, it can't be the only thing to do so."

I sighed. "Maybe it wasn't kept a secret for just everybody else. Maybe some Chozo kept it secret from others, you know?"

I threw that consideration out there almost whimsically. Like a paper plane thrown out of a window – not much concern for where it would land. But Excolo nodded his head in agreement. He seemed to be taking that consideration seriously. I started to do so, too.

There was a lot I didn't know about the Chozo, despite how much I did know about them. I knew they shielded me from certain things. And it's easy to be a child and unaware of what's going on around you. And even so, I knew the Chozo were not infallible. They were not perfect beings. They weren't in harmony with everything, every last particle in the universe, as much as many believed.

If the Garden existed, there had to be a reason why it wasn't so publically documented. If it existed.

Th-THUD

My heart suddenly skipped. It chugged like an engine gasping for oil. I felt my rib cage burn with an intensity I never felt before.

I felt trapped in my armor. Almost as if it was closing in on me. I started to claw at it, desperate to get it off my body. Simultaneously, several warning lights and alarms popped within the cockpit. Adam was not happy.

"STEP AWAY. DO NOT TOUCH HER." It was Adam, but it barely sounded like him. The security override had completely taken over.

Excolo indeed stepped back, hands raised high in the air. "Woah, woah," he started. "That wasn't me, I swear."

"I-it's not," I struggled to even catch my breath let alone use it to speak. "M-my heart. I c-can't-"

"SAMUS. DO NOT TAKE OFF YOUR SUIT." I had to relax. The more I panicked, the harder it would be to hear his instructions or think rationally. But I just couldn't stop myself from trying to reach at my chest. The new suit's chest-plate wasn't even remotely as thick as that of the former Varia Suit, but it was still far beyond breaching by my feeble attempts.

The suit was all I could think about at that moment, for some reason. Maybe it was my body's attempt to distract me from the fact that it felt like I was having a heart attack. I was still getting used to the new suit - it's sleek, yet primal form and nature. A departure from what I was used to, yet it was like I had stepped into the Power Suit at its base form for the first time again.

I was still getting used to the Metroid DNA inside me. I hated cold showers, but now I really hated them. I had to turn the temperature up to almost scorching, so much so Adam would sometimes ask if I had somehow gotten sunburned while on-board the ship somehow.

I was still getting used to assimilating the SA-X, too. Reintegrating with my former self.

"SAMUS."

"SAMUS, HOLD STILL."

I checked back into the present. I was now slumped onto the floor, Excolo helping me down. Every movement, every touch of his was timid.

"STEP BACK."

I did what I could to muster up a full lung. "Adam, w-what's happening?"

"Hold still," Adam said. "You're going into cardiac arrest. You need to stay as still as possible. I'm going to send a defibrillation pulse to your suit remotely."

Excolo tried to step in. "There has to be something I can do."

But Adam just repeated his warning. Excolo stepped back. The entire control panel before them was attending entirely and directly to resuscitation efforts. But as Excolo stepped back, he caught something in the corner of his eye - a small script running at the edge of one of the far monitors, distinctly different in font and size than the rest.

I began to drop in and out of consciousness. I don't remember how long Adam continued on, but after the first couple of shocks, I couldn't hear or feel a thing at all.

Over darkness, endless, nothing…

"Young child, it's been far too long. You've become an unparalleled illustration of life's potential. It's so nice to see you again."

Pirate Carrier Absolute - En Route to Elex

Weavel stormed back into the bridge, very close to throwing his hands in the air. Commander Veron is right within his wake.

"I'm sorry, sir. But what exactly did I just see?" Weavel said before he had turned around entirely.

Veron heard every bit of it nonetheless. "I won't mince words with you General, because you're no cheap cut yourself. We've reverse-engineered the Hunter's metal exoskeleton better than we ever have before. Ridley wants that technology to become available to you, but he's not willing to test it out on you, too. As it so happened, we stumbled upon a volunteer."

"You're experimenting on an innocent human."

"Not innocent. Lieutenant Cameron Randall. Now on his sixth year of service in the Seventh Fleet under command of Fleet Admiral Castor Dane of the Galactic Federation Navy. How many pirates do you think Lieutenant Randall scraped off the bottom of his boots in these past six years?"

"He's doing his wartime duty, just as we are. He shouldn't be tortured for that."

Veron let a chuckle slip through his mandibles. "Wartime? General, this is daily life. There will never be a time in which the Federation will not pursue their ultimate goal of completely eradicating the pirates. And we cannot exist without always been at odds with the Federation. It is the natural way of things. It is not a tale of two combatants."

Weavel steeled himself. He knew he was fighting a losing battle of semantics long before it ever got any good.

"If the tests prove successful on the subject," Veron continued. "Then we can start working towards applying them to your mobile life support system."

Weavel was silent. This was the farthest he had gotten at getting back at me for what I had done with him. Yet he could barely stick even a toe over the edge.

"You're oddly reluctant for someone on the verge of getting revenge on the individual who almost murdered you."

"Murdered me," Weavel paraphrased, now on the move, heading towards the exitway. He turned back to Veron. "Don't try to play games with me Veron. I'll make sure your words outlast you."

And with that, Weavel stepped out of sight. Veron locked his hands behind his back, mandibles snapping with pleasure.