| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3 |
Ramses leaned up against the building they were all sprawled out next to. He
took insufficient, shallow breaths, trying to make them deeper, or at least
complete one good inhalation so he could jumpstart his system. He
occasionally did get some air to go all the way down to the bottom of his
lungs, but it was never as helpful as he hoped. Finally, he yawned, which
helped more.
“What’s the issue?” Mateo asked. He was choosing to try to recuperate while
staying horizontal on the ground. “Why aren’t our healing nanites fixing our
bodies?”
Ramses slurred his words. “Whatever they gave us, it was probably designed
to target our substrate repair systems. It’s harder for the modern man to
get intoxicated, which is fine, because people stopped doing recreational
drugs anyway. They’re still around, though; in certain dark corners of the
universe. The drugs people take now have had to be adapted to contend with
our advanced bodies. The funny thing is, if someone from, say, the year 2025
were to try this drug, it probably wouldn’t even affect them. They’re too
simple.”
Mateo was doing a lot of half-yawns, which were never satisfying, and his
frustration with this was only growing. “Even when you’re drunk, you’re a
genius. Quit soundin’ so smart.” He coughed.
“He’s right,” Garland said, turning himself over to the side so he could
throw up and not choke on it. He wiped his lips with his sleeve. “That’s the
solution, though.” He retched, and prepared to let go of more. “Purge it.”
“Yeah, clear the system. That makes sense.” Ramses reached his hands out,
and apported his solid helmet into them from the pocket dimension that it
was stored in. It was a backup in case the nanite helmet he usually formed
wasn’t working, for whatever reason. “Okay.” Oh, big yawn. “Here’s what
you’re gonna wanna do.” He turned the helmet over, and placed his lips near
the back of it. “This is gonna make you throw up like Garlique did.” Ramses
stopped talking for a moment, still staring into space blankly. “Did I start
calling you Garlique?”
Garland got to his hands and knees so he could force more out of his
stomach. “You sure did. Bleeaaargh! Gaaack!” He spit. “I don’t care for it.”
“It’s gonna make you throw up, Matic. Oh, I get it, it’s not just garlic.
It’s like if I combined your two names. Anyway, medicine is gonna shoot out,
and then what you’re gonna wanna do is turn away immediately, so you don’t
vomit into the helmet itself, which is why the emetopuff is placed in the
back, instead of the front. Watch me do it. Puff me, Thistle.” As he
promised, a cloud of medicine darted out of the hidden cartridge, and into
Ramses’ mouth. He dabbed away from his helmet, and vomited onto the ground,
more productively than Garland with his piecemeal attempts.
Mateo did exactly as Ramses did, and immediately felt a lot better.
“Can I get a hit of that?” Garland requested.
Ramses tossed him his helmet. “Only one. It has two doses. It’s not exactly
something the suit was designed to expect to need a whole lot of.”
“How do you know to purge?” Mateo questioned. “You said that you didn’t know
the water was laced with the stuff.”
“That’s what I said, that’s what I meant,” Garland replied, holding the
helmet, waiting for the opportunity to use it. “I never said I didn’t know
what the drug was, though. It’s called Dare. Let me see if I remember...it
stands for Debilitating Anti-Resistant Euphoriaceutical. I think it’s a
backronym, though.”
Bronach had been surprisingly quiet this whole time, and they had kind of
been ignoring him. Garland probably didn’t know who he was, but he was doing
a good job of following their lead. Bronach now took something out of an
ankle holster, and jammed it into his own neck. “Ahh,” he said with relief.
He stood up, and started hopping around to get his muscles loosened up.
“Cleaner, safer, more effective, and doesn’t taste so bad in my mouth.” He
held it out towards Garland. “I have an extra dose too, just so you know all
of your options.”
“It won’t do anything,” Ramses warned. “I’m pretty sure he was just drunk.
Alcohol is nothing compared to what it sounds like we were slipped.” He
apported two bottles into his hands. “Electrolytes.” He threw one of them
over to Garland.
“I don’t know who he is anyway.” Garland took the puff, and purged.
Mateo apported his own drink, and started sipping on it. “Bro, are we in the
Goldilocks Corridor?”
“You appeared to me through dark particles last year. You told me that you
thought you could put me on your pattern as long as we timed it just right.
Then you activated the particles again just as the clock struck midnight
central. We ended up here, and I think it worked.”
“You agreed to be on our pattern?” Ramses asked.
“Of course not, but I was drunk, and I couldn’t fight back. What are those
little creepy things?”
“Neu—”
“New reason to fear us,” Mateo interrupted. Boom, saved it. He didn’t need
to know that they were neutrinos. For that matter, neither did Garland.
“Never mind that, though. “Do you know what planet we’re on?”
Bronach looked around. “I don’t just by looking at the sky.”
“How do you expect to get off of it yourself?” Ramses asked him.
Bronach shrugged. “I have a tracking implant. They’ll come for me, and when
they do, they’ll get you too. All I have to do is wait it out.”
“Not if I can help it. Come along now, boys.” Mateo stood and waved Ramses
and Garland towards him. After they got close enough, he tried to release a
swarm of dark particles from the dark dimension, but it didn’t work. He
could feel the tiny windows opening up, and he could feel his power
engaging, but it wasn’t enough. He was empty. It reminded him of turning the
key on a car with a dead battery. Click, click, click, but no ignition.
“It’s okay,” Bronach began to joke. “It happens to a lot of guys your age.”
“I probably just need to recharge,” Mateo insisted. “We’re gonna go to the
other side of the planet now, so...bye.”
“Wait, Mateo.”
“Don’t you worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. We’ll overthrow you in due
time. Just not quite today.”
“No, I just wanted to say something.” He kicked at the dirt bashfully, like
a little boy trying to ask the older girl if she wanted to see his rock
collection in his treehouse. But then he suddenly shifted to a far more
serious, and perhaps even sinister, expression. “I know you’re on
Castlebourne. I’m gathering my forces now.”
Ramses suddenly blitzed Bronach, and spirited them away. Mateo tapped on his
comms disc. “Ram. Ram! Are you there? Where did you take him? What are you
doing?” No response. He tapped again. “As anyone else on this channel? Can
anyone hear me? This is Mateo Matic. Calling anyone and everyone in
the Goldilocks Corridor.”
Ramses reappeared, soaking wet.
“What did you do?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ramses answered gravely, sending shivers down
Mateo’s spine. “He’ll be fine. Guy’s got nine-thousand lives. I’m more
worried about us.”
Mateo didn’t approve of what Ramses likely just did, but he understood it.
And he was right, they needed to get out of here. They couldn’t use their
tandem slingdrives with only the two of them. They really should have
brought a third member of their team. He just didn’t want to overwhelm
Garland, and make him feel ganged up on. Why didn’t Boyd warn him that the
dark particles didn’t always work, presumably if you use them too much? He
played around with them a lot during the party; probably very wastefully.
They didn’t have to be stuck. They weren’t beyond saving, just a little lost
at the moment. Their best hope would be if the Vellani Ambassador happened
to show up, which it probably wouldn’t because there was no one else here.
Maybe they were the exact reason why this little town looked
abandoned. Team Kadiar came, and scooped up the whole population because
they all wanted to escape the Exin Empire, and left. Or maybe this place
just outlived its usefulness. There was no telling where the ship would be,
and no way of getting there either way. It wasn’t like they were ever given
a schedule of which world the VA would go to next. They weren’t even sure if
the refugee program was still active. They did have friends here, though
they didn’t know exactly where; just not in range of comms so far.
“Garland, only you can save us now.”
“How’s that?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“Your mother says that you have some means of blocking her from finding your
location. You need to release that so our team can come get us.”
“I dunno, I never agreed to see her.”
“That’s not really the point anymore, is it?” Mateo posed.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Garland agreed, sighing. He shut his eyelids and
centered himself. Nothing special happened to him. There was no change in
the way he looked, nor any dramatic light effect. He just reopened his eyes
and said, “it’s done.”
Right on cue, a blob of technicolors formed a few meters away. When the
colorful light receded, their team was left standing there. Most of them
looked calm as they spotted the guys, and opened their helmets. One of them
started to stumble around, however, and grasp at her helmet. Marie was the
closest, so she tapped on the side of Magnolia’s helmet, using the master
code to unlock it for her.
“Oh,” Magnolia said with relief. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”
“You should be able to breathe better in it,” Leona informed her, “not
worse.”
“Well...” Finally, Magnolia made eye contact with her son. “Garland.”
“Hey, mom.”
“I don’t have any expectations,” she claimed. “I just wanna talk.”
“I can do that. Maybe away from them, though?”
“Certainly,” Leona agreed. “Stay within view, though. This rock might be
dangerous. We would never eavesdrop intentionally, but we do have superior
hearing, so I recommend going about fifty meters. We’ll walk in the opposite
direction a little.”
“Hey, thanks. All of you,” Magnolia said.
“No problem,” Mateo replied, despite the myriad of problems.
“Report,” Leona requested for their own team meeting.
“Do you know where Epsilon Eridani is?” Mateo asked her.
“Yeah.”
“That’s where we were, before,” Mateo began. “We must have left Darko there.
At least, I hope we did. I don’t know where else he could be.”
“Well, now that we have somewhere to navigate to, we’ll be fine. But why
didn’t you just go back with your dark particles?”
“It’s broken. I think I used it too much.”
“Yeah, that can happen,” Romana explained. “It’s kind of bass-ackwards. The
more you use it, the faster your energy runs out, but also, the more used to
storing it your body becomes, so ultimately, your reserves will grow, and
you’ll last longer between recharging cycles.”
“Thanks. I’m glad he...told you so much about it,” Mateo lied.
“I used to metabolize dark particles too, remember?” Romana said.
“Oh yeah, you don’t seem to do that anymore. How did you stop?” Ramses
asked, quite curious about it.
“Boyd absorbed them from me in the mirror reality, so I could be free.”
“Oh.”
They continued to catch each other up. The girls had their own celebrations
without them, and while there weren’t any drugs involved, they were pretty
eventful too. After Magnolia and Garland finished talking, over half of them
departed. Leona, Ramses, Marie, and Olimpia used their tandem slingdrives to
transport the outsiders back to Earth, with plans to rendezvous with their
other half later. Mateo, Angela, and Romana would go straight back to
Castlebourne to warn Hrockas of the impending invasion. They didn’t know
when Bronach’s forces would arrive, but hopefully not for years. This was
one reason why Leona discouraged Hrockas from figuring out how to install a
Nexus on his planet. It opened them up to too many security vulnerabilities,
and it wasn’t necessary with the quantum casting and reframe engines. As
long as they maintained the encryption of The Terminal, and reinforced their
orbital defense systems, there should be nothing they couldn’t take on.
Before the three of them finished investigating the nearby buildings in case
there was anything useful to find out, a ship descended from the heavens. A
ramp opened in the front. A contingency of soldiers filed out, just as they
were wont to do in the Exin Empire. A masked menace slowly walked down the
ramp between their goons, and stood before the three members of Team Matic
who were still here. They reached up and removed the mask. It was Korali.
She was smirking. “Mateo, Mateo, Mateo. I should have known you would be
involved with the abduction. Tell me. Where’s his body?”
