Part 7
The Ectomorph ship landed right in the middle of the government district, and as the hatches opened, armed Ectomorphs immediately rushed out to round up humans. Since Tvorgh and Xana wanted to be taken prisoner, they acted extremely clumsily and came very close to the ship; their gamble paid off and they were captured—no one suspected that the two petite girls were actually Genomorphs.
Inside, the ship consisted of numerous cells, each packed with several humans, mostly younger people up to twenty years of age. Apparently, the souls of young humans were particularly nourishing. Shortly after the two were locked in a cell as well, the hatch closed and the entire ship launched into space with tremendous acceleration. After a short time, 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?" Xana asked.
"If they can reach the same speeds as we can, a few minutes at most."
"And what is your plan, Tvorgh?"
"After landing, there is bound to be some sort of market where we will be sold. We let ourselves be sold and then we begin..."
It didn't escape Tvorgh that other cell inmates were listening to him attentively. Xana turned around as well and 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 strong their life energy is."
The other inmates were rather frightened by their capture, but Tvorgh didn't care about them; like every Zer, he was a true 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, yet he was still emotionally cold when it came to anyone else.
The cell door opened and an Ectomorph shouted:
"Time for a meal."
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 wouldn't 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. At that, Tvorgh turned away and wiped a small tear from the corner of his eye. He understood Xana's anger towards 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 was beginning to erase his memory.
"Not now!" he began to scream, clutching his head, but the pain wouldn't subside. Xana held him tight and asked:
"What's wrong?"
"The virus... it's wiping 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 at all. Who am I?"
The virus operated in Tvorgh's brain just like inside a computer; it erased all information except for the basic operating system, meaning his language capability. 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 hide 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 come to Dral, the planet of the Ectomorphs. You want to destroy Shadow Nemesis and liberate the humans from here," Xana said softly, giving a brief summary, and then explained a great many details to him.
Tvorgh himself couldn't remember a single thing; he had become, so to speak, a new Genomorph. Since it was not amnesia that afflicted him, he also had no chance of getting his memory back, but he believed Xana that he was meant to free the humans as well. After Xana had told him everything about the Genomorphs and himself, he said:
"I suppose I have to believe you. I don't have another choice."
Gravity returned—a sure sign that the ship would soon land. Tvorgh felt the vibrations of the floor panels very distinctly; Xana suggested these were the anti-gravity drives.
A jolt made it very clear that the ship had now landed. Only now did the cell doors open again, and an armed Ectomorph ordered everyone to disembark. The corpses of the humans "consumed" during the journey were lying all over the place, and when the main hatch opened, several vehicles drove in and their grab arms gathered up all the bodies, loaded them, and drove off. Only then was the order given to exit the ship.
In the sky, Tvorgh noticed hundreds of similar ships arriving and departing, just like the one they had been brought in on. Thousands of Ectomorphs stood around on a marketplace, picking out their "food." Most of them were Ectomorphs of the second kind; only a few possessed that aura around them capable of separating the soul from the body. Perhaps the rest of them lived on another planet. Tvorgh said softly 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 what it looks like? But let's stick to the plan and let ourselves be sold. That might prove helpful. If we are sold separately, you know what to do! Our rendezvous 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 on the marketplace and began bargaining. Meanwhile, Tvorgh noticed that parts of his memory were returning; evidently, the first erasure had not been thorough enough, but the second one in about ten years certainly would be. Tvorgh didn't remember everything, but his technical knowledge was coming back.
He waited quietly until someone bought him, and as expected, he was separated from Xana. His buyers were an Ectomorph family. These poor devils thought they had purchased a little girl whose soul they could easily suck out without expecting any resistance. Tvorgh tried to make it look as though he were struggling with all his might, without actually using his real strength.
"Don't fight back, you don't stand a chance anyway," the head of the family said, and the two children laughed. Tvorgh laughed on the inside too, thinking: 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 far too much of Zer; he began to wonder whether it was truly right to kill these beings.
The house belonging to the family looked relatively modest, even if one could immediately see that it was crammed with technological gadgets—the usual stuff: several televisions, communication devices, and the like, just as was common on Zer, except that Zer televisions were based on a different technology.
The head of the family locked Tvorgh in a pantry down in the cellar and chained him there. They were Ectomorphs of the first variety, and therefore they could drain life energy continuously in stages, allowing their victim to recover, even if the victim would then fall under their control. For Tvorgh, there was no danger; he would survive this procedure, though his artificial soul would not be able to regenerate. He could also have shattered the chains with ease, but he wanted to wait.
"Don't worry, we won't kill you," the lady of the house said, and Tvorgh slowly began to doubt what he was doing. 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 that tool, the Ectomorphs were completely harmless to Zer, and the humans practically belonged to them—even if what they did 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 tore the chains apart and went upstairs, where the entire family had just gathered for grace before their meal. Just imagine their faces when they saw that the little girl they had captured suddenly grabbed the head of the family and hurled him several meters through the air.
Tvorgh could not transform back just yet, as his blood lacked the nutrients needed to supply his cells, but even in his current body he exhibited the strength of a bear. The woman tried to stop Tvorgh with telekinesis, but against a skillfully deployed counter-field she stood no chance either. Tvorgh now wanted to know only one thing:
"Where is the control center for Shadow Nemesis?"
Completely stunned, the woman took a city map and marked an X at one location with the words:
"Twenty floors down."
She was too shocked to realize that she had just betrayed the Ectomorphs' source of power.
Tvorgh reassured them all: "Don't worry, I won't kill you if you behave reasonably." Then he took his disperser and destroyed all the telephones in the house.
When Xana regained consciousness, she was lying alongside other humans in one of the storage rooms of a military barracks; she had not the slightest inkling that this was the very control center from which Shadow Nemesis was operated.
She freed herself from her chains just as easily as Tvorgh, and took a closer look around. The storage hall was secured with steel doors, so that even she, with her enormous strength, would not be able to force them open. The interior was partitioned to accommodate up to two hundred chained humans, but including Xana, there were only fifteen people present, all in chains.
Footsteps could be heard approaching from outside. Xana lay down
The door opened and someone stepped in. Xana wanted to seize this opportunity and lunged at him.
"- Are you pleased to see me?", asked Tvorgh.
"- How did you find me?"
"- PSI perception.", lied Tvorgh, who knew it was pure coincidence. He really should have given her a tracking beacon.
The door stood open, but it was not going to be easy to destroy the control center now with Xana in tow; besides, the Ectomorphs could simply build a new control center. Tvorgh's plan was to steer Shadow Nemesis into a black hole so it could be destroyed forever.
Quick footsteps approached. Tvorgh positioned himself behind the door and signaled Xana to stand on the other side. When the door finally opened, an Ectomorph came in, intending to grab a human, but it never got the chance, as Xana sent it off to dreamland with a well-aimed strike. Tvorgh whistled in admiration; he never would have thought Xana could finally muster the courage to knock someone down.
"- Go find the control center already, I have to free the people here.", she said and began stripping the chains off the prisoners.
Tvorgh grabbed her arm:
"- Think about what you're doing, we can't take all these people away from here. If YOU free them, we'll have to leave them behind; a quick death would surely be more merciful."
Xana, however, was not to be swayed, so Tvorgh ran out into the corridor to finally locate the control center. Out in the hallway, he discarded his scruples about killing; after all, his own skin was on the line. Many soldiers charged toward him, firing their projectile weapons. Tvorgh took a few bullets in the process, but thanks to his rapid cellular regeneration, he barely noticed them. Blasting a path with wide dispersion fire, several layers of paint were stripped from the walls, and from the inscriptions, Tvorgh noticed that this building was not from Dral—the writing was far too different.
The elevators wouldn't arrive no matter how wildly Tvorgh pressed the buttons, so he finally forced the door open himself and leaped several stories down the shaft. His only mistake was that he still hadn't transformed back, and on this planet there was almost nothing edible for humans and Genomorphs. The jump broke a few of his bones; they did heal, but too slowly.
The elevator car went downward. Twenty stories below the planet's surface, the alien starship was possibly twice as large, for it was certainly no ordinary building. Tvorgh had never seen such a vessel; everything looked ultramodern, with 3D displays and monitors all over the control room. What bothered Tvorgh was the military personnel operating the control consoles of Shadow Nemesis, but it was reassuring that the technology behind it did not originate from Dral.
Suddenly, the fire alarm sounded. All the military personnel evacuated the room in panic. Tvorgh seized the opportunity, rushed into the room, and altered the controls. Shadow Nemesis had already come very close to ZER II, but now it was headed straight for the nearest black hole. To make turning back impossible, Tvorgh set his dispersor to overload and ran back toward the exit as fast as he could.
After climbing through the elevator shaft, he met up with Xana and 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 replied hurriedly and kept moving.
"- What did you do?"
"- I set my dispersor to tear this entire ship to pieces in a moment."
"- Ship?!?"
"- Yes, it's a starship that crashed here millennia ago. Now let's get out of here!"
Hardly were all the humans and Genomorphs safe when the city shook from a massive explosion, and the entire spaceship disguised as a building turned into a cloud of smoke. The starship 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 extended. The circle was finally closed.
Tvorgh picked up a burning bundle of cables from the floor and looked at it pensively. Xana abruptly interrupted his thoughts, remarking:
"- If your dispersor blew up, what are you going to defend yourself with now?"
Several Ectomorphs were advancing toward Tvorgh; he truly had no weapon left.
Suddenly, the former prisoners began fighting their tormentors.
After Tvorgh and Xana returned from Dral, Xana was accepted on Zer II, while Tvorgh had to remain on Earth and have 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 based upon it, this story was written.
L.C.D. in 1990
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P.S. That was the story SHADOW NEMESIS. Starting in the next SCENE+ issue, another new story will follow, which I am currently writing. Title: VORTEX. For a change, it takes place mostly on our Earth, and since it is being written right now, it is far better written and more exciting than SHADOW NEMESIS. VORTEX is a gateway to a parallel universe, artificially created by Luzifer. Are Terra Primer and Earth about to fight one another? What is Luzifer really? Will Vahanara return? All these questions will finally be answered.
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