Shadow Nemesis: Part 7

Part 7

The Ectomorph ship landed right in the middle of the government district, and as the hatches opened, armed Ectomorphs immediately poured out to round up humans. Since Tvorgh and Xana wanted to be captured, they acted extremely clumsily and came very close to the ship; their plan worked, and they were taken prisoner—no one suspected that the two petite girls were actually Genomorphs. Inside, the ship consisted of many cells, each containing several humans locked up, mostly youngsters up to twenty years of age. Apparently, the souls of young humans were especially nutritious. Shortly after the two were also locked into a cell, the hatch closed, and the entire ship launched into space with enormous acceleration. After a short while, Tvorgh became weightless, which made it clear to him that Ectomorph technology was inferior to that of the Genomorphs in several respects.

"How long will the journey take?" asked Xana.

"If they can reach the same speeds as we do, a few minutes at most."

"And what's your plan, Tvorgh?"

"After landing, there's bound to be some sort of market where we'll be sold; we let ourselves be sold, and then we begin..." It did not escape Tvorgh that other cellmates were listening to him attentively. Xana turned around as well and then asked him:

"Why are there so many children here?"

Tvorgh answered her quietly: "I suspected earlier that children's souls are the strongest energy sources. You know how powerful their life energy is."

The other cellmates were somewhat terrified by their capture, but Tvorgh didn't care about them; like every Zer, he was an absolute egoist. Xana, on the other hand, took some time and tried to calm them down. Tvorgh slowly began to understand what it meant to have a soul. With his artificial energy soul, he could feel somewhat like a human, but was still cold-hearted when it came to everyone else.

The cell door opened, and an Ectomorph called out:

"Time for a meal." But only Tvorgh and Xana knew how to interpret the true undertone. One of the cellmates stood up and said: "I'm hungry!", but Xana held him back:

"That's not what they mean at all!" Yet the boy would not be stopped. He floated through the open door, which closed behind him.

"We'll never see him again," Tvorgh said unmoved.

"How can you be so heartless? The longer I know you, the more I appreciate my human soul," Xana said, whereupon Tvorgh turned around and wiped a small tear from the corner of his eye. He understood Xana's anger at him; he must have seemed like a soulless monster to her, though in reality he was no monster at all.

Suddenly, a piercing pain shot through his head; the virus began to erase his memory.

"Not now!" he started to scream, clutching his head, but the pain wouldn't subside. Xana held him tight and asked:

"What's wrong?"

"The virus, it's erasing my memory. When it's over, you have to tell me who I am, what abilities I have, and everything about my mission. About... about... oh, I can't remember anything, who am I?"

The virus worked in Tvorgh's brain just like in a computer, wiping out all information except for the basic system—namely, the ability to speak. Since the Zer brain stored all data holographically, the erasure proceeded very quickly. Xana saw her chance to turn Tvorgh into a warm-hearted person, but she didn't want to conceal anything from him either, as the Ectomorphs were a greater danger than a Zer behaving like a Zer.

"You are Tvorgh Kor, a Genomorph, and you transformed yourself and me to reach Dral, the planet of the Ectomorphs. You want to destroy Shadow Nemesis and free the humans from there," Xana said quietly in a brief summary, and then explained many more details to him. Tvorgh himself couldn't remember a single thing; he became, so to speak, a new Genomorph, and since it was not amnesia that afflicted him, he had no chance of getting his memory back either. But he believed Xana that he should also free the humans. After Xana had told him everything about the Genomorphs and himself, he said:

"I have no choice but to believe you. I don't have any other option."

Gravity returned, a sure sign that the ship would land soon. Tvorgh felt the vibrations of the floor panels very clearly; Xana assumed these were the anti-gravity engines.

A jolt indicated quite clearly that the ship had now landed. Only then did the cell doors open again, and an armed Ectomorph ordered them to disembark. The corpses of the humans "consumed" during the journey lay scattered everywhere, and as the main hatch opened, several vehicles drove in and their grab arms picked up all the corpses, loaded them up, and drove off. Only then was the order given to exit the ship.

Tvorgh noticed hundreds of similar ships in the sky, arriving and departing, just like the one they had been brought here in. Thousands of Ectomorphs were standing around on a marketplace, picking out their "food". Most of them were Ectomorphs of the second kind; only a few had that aura around them capable of separating the soul from the body. Perhaps the rest of them lived on another planet. Tvorgh said quietly to Xana:

"Look for a building that looks like one could control Shadow Nemesis from it."

"But I don't know what something like that would look like," Xana protested, also in a whisper.

"Do you think I have or had any clue beforehand what it looks like? But let's stick to the plan and let ourselves be sold. It might prove helpful. If we are sold separately, you know what to do! Our meeting point will be that tower over there." Tvorgh pointed to the tallest building in the futuristic-looking city.

The Ectomorphs lined up all the humans in the marketplace and began bargaining. Meanwhile, Tvorgh noticed that parts of his memory were returning; apparently, the first erasure hadn't been thorough enough, but the second one in about ten years certainly would be. While Tvorgh didn't remember everything, his technical knowledge returned. He waited calmly until someone bought him, and as expected, he was separated from Xana. His buyers were an Ectomorph family. These poor devils thought they had bought a little girl whose soul they could suck out without problems or resistance. Tvorgh tried to make it look as if he were resisting with all his might, without actually using his true strength.

"Don't fight back, you don't stand a chance anyway," said the head of the family, and the two children laughed. Tvorgh laughed on the inside too and thought: "Just wait until we get to your home."

It was a suburban neighborhood, not far from the marketplace; one of the houses belonged to them. It reminded Tvorgh too much of Zer; he began to wonder whether it was really right to kill these creatures.

The house belonging to the family looked relatively modest, although one could immediately see that it was crammed with technical devices—the usual stuff: a few televisions, telephones, and other things, just like on Zer, only the Zer televisions were based on a different technology.

The head of the family locked Tvorgh in a pantry—that is, in the basement—and chained him up there. They were Ectomorphs of the first variety, and could therefore drain life energy gradually, so that their victim could recover, even if under their control afterward. There was no danger for Tvorgh; he would survive this procedure, only his artificial soul wouldn't be able to regenerate. He could also easily break the chains, but he wanted to wait.

"Don't worry, we won't kill you," said the lady of the house, and Tvorgh slowly began to doubt his actions. Sure, Shadow Nemesis was a threat to Zer II. Now that this moon of Jupiter was no longer in a neutral time field, they had certainly deployed the neutron star against it, but without this tool, the Ectomorphs were completely harmless to Zer, and the humans practically belonged to them, even if what they were doing here went against the moral sensibilities of the Zer. No, the killing had to stop; Tvorgh resolved both to save the humans and to spare the Ectomorphs.

With ease, as if they were made of paper, he snapped the chains and went upstairs, where the whole family had just gathered for grace before their meal. Just imagine their faces when they saw the little girl they had captured suddenly grab the head of the family and fling him several meters through the air. Tvorgh couldn't transform back yet, as his blood lacked enough nutrients to supply his cells, but even in his current body he developed immense strength. The woman tried to stop Tvorgh with telekinesis, but against a skillfully deployed counter-field, she didn't stand a chance either. Tvorgh now wanted to know only one thing:

"Where is the control center for Shadow Nemesis?"

Utterly stunned, the woman took a city map and marked an X on it with the words:

"Twenty floors down." She was too shocked to realize that she had betrayed the Ectomorphs' source of power.

Tvorgh calmed them all down: "Don't worry, I won't kill you if you behave reasonably." Then he took his Dispersor and destroyed all the telephones in the house.

When Xana came to, she was lying next to other humans in one of the storage rooms of a military barracks; she didn't have the slightest clue that this was the control center from which Shadow Nemesis was operated. She broke free of her chains just as easily as Tvorgh and took a closer look around. The warehouse was locked with steel doors, so that even she, with her enormous strength, couldn't force them open. The interior was partitioned so that up to two hundred people could be chained up, but including Xana, there were only fifteen people there, all chained.

Footsteps could be heard from outside; Xana lay down

...further on. The door opened and someone came in. Xana wanted to take advantage of this opportunity and lunged at him.

"Are you glad to see me, perhaps?" asked Tvorgh.

"How did you find me?"

"PSI perception," lied Tvorgh, who knew it had merely been a coincidence. He should have given her a tracking beacon.

The door was open, but it would not be easy now to destroy the control center with Xana; besides, the Ectomorphs could have simply built a new control center. Tvorgh's plan was to steer Shadow Nemesis toward a black hole so that it could be destroyed forever. Footsteps rapidly drew closer; Tvorgh stepped behind the door and signaled Xana to stand on the other side. When the door finally opened, an Ectomorph entered, intending to grab a human, but it never got the chance, because Xana sent him straight to dreamland with a well-aimed strike. Tvorgh whistled in admiration; he never would have thought Xana could finally muster the courage to strike someone down.

"Go find the control center already, I have to free the humans here," she said and began stripping the chains off the prisoners.

Tvorgh grabbed her arm: "Consider what you are doing, we can't get all the humans away from here. If you free them, we'll still have to leave them behind—a quick death would surely be more merciful."

Xana would not be dissuaded, however, so Tvorgh ran quickly out into the corridor to finally locate the control center. Out in the hallway he forgot his scruples about killing; after all, his own skin was on the line. Many soldiers rushed toward him, firing their projectile weapons. Tvorgh promptly took several bullets, but thanks to rapid cellular reproduction he barely felt a thing. With wide dispersion fire he cleared a path, blasting several layers of paint off the walls in the process, and Tvorgh noticed from the inscriptions that this building was not of Dral origin; the scripts were far too different. The elevators did not come even though Tvorgh hammered wildly at the buttons; finally he forced open the door himself and leapt several stories down into the shaft. His only mistake was that he still hadn't transformed back, since there was almost nothing edible for humans and Genomorphs on this planet. The jump broke several of his bones; they healed, but too slowly. The elevator was further down. Twenty stories below the planet's surface—yet the alien spaceship was possibly twice as large, for it was most definitely not a building. Tvorgh had never seen such a vessel; everything looked ultramodern, and the control room was filled with 3D displays and screens everywhere. What bothered Tvorgh were the military personnel operating the control consoles of Shadow Nemesis, but it was reassuring that the technology behind it did not stem from Dral.

Suddenly the fire alarm blared. All the military personnel fled the room in a panic. Tvorgh seized the opportunity, darted into the room, and readjusted the controls. Shadow Nemesis had already come very close to ZER II, but now it was heading directly toward the nearest black hole. To make turning back impossible, Tvorgh set his disperser to overload and ran back toward the exit as fast as he could. After climbing back up the elevator shaft, he met Xana with the humans.

"What's going on? Why are you running so fast?" she asked.

"When you hear a bang, run as fast as you can," Tvorgh answered hurriedly and kept running.

"What did you do?"

"I set my disperser so that it will soon blow this entire ship to pieces."

"Ship?!?"

"Yes, it's a spaceship that crashed here millennia ago. Now get out of here!"

Barely were all the humans and Genomorphs in safety when the city shook beneath a massive explosion; the entire spaceship disguised as a building dissolved into a cloud of smoke. The spaceship that had traveled into the past using Benedict's time machine and crashed here millions of years ago. It had elevated the technological knowledge of the Draalians, and thanks to its application, their lifespan had been prolonged. The circle had finally closed.

Tvorgh picked up a smoldering bundle of cables from the ground and looked at it pensively. Xana interrupted his thoughts quite abruptly, remarking:

"If your disperser exploded, what do you plan to defend yourself with now?"

Several Ectomorphs approached Tvorgh; he truly had no weapon left.

Now, suddenly, the former prisoners began to fight their tormentors.

* * *

After Tvorgh and Xana returned from Dral, Xana was admitted to Zer II, while Tvorgh had to remain on Earth, having his memory erased every ten years. From then on he kept a diary to repeatedly refresh his memory. This diary was discovered a few years ago, and this story was written based upon it.

L.C.D. in 1990

T H E E N D

P.S. That was the story SHADOW NEMESIS. Starting with the next SCENE+ issue, a new story will follow, which I am currently writing. Title: VORTEX. For a change, it takes place for the most part on our Earth, and since it is only being written now, it is far better written and much more exciting than SHADOW NEMESIS. VORTEX is a gateway to a parallel universe, artificially created by Luzifer. Are Terra Primer and Earth now fighting against each other? What is Luzifer really? Will Vahanara return? All these questions will finally be answered...