Two Halves: chapter 33

chapter 33, out early

“What are you doing?” stammered Nicolas as Bestalel turned and directed his wrist at another camera. It stopped its recording of the room as well, and as Nicolas stood there and watched the other two visible cameras go offline Bestalel turned to him.

 

“They don’t have emergency maintenance,” he said simply as he started running his hands over section of the wall. Tapping here and there and pressing his ear to the wall listening for something, “Here, Nicolas is your Hammer-mod still function?” asked Bestalel as he tapped the spot again and pressed his ear against it. Nicolas hadn’t thought about the upgrade since Kyle had given it to him. He pressed small semi-organic pads on his palm and felt the release of adrenaline as the muscles up and down his arm tensed and expanded slightly.

 

“Yes, but why are we doing this? What’s going on?” asked Nicolas as Bestalel looked up and down the hallway. He took off his jacket and gripped the seam along one side, and began to pull. A long rip appeared along thread line and several small objects fell out.

 

“I do not have much time to explain. We are being led into a trap, and I need to buy us some time. Please use the Hammer to punch through that section of wall. I need to rewire the security systems.” The urgency in his voice was so alarming that Nicolas complied immediately. He pressed down hard on the pads for a light spurt of power and punched the wall. The thud was deafening, and a spider web of cracks raced along the wall from the impact point. He reared back for another punch and struck again; after three more punches he could see a small dark chamber beyond. With a final smash he could see inside. It was dark, but he could make out a system of fiber optic cables and thin wires running along the walls.

 

Bestalel held a thin flashlight between his teeth as he opened up a thin black case. He untwined several wires from inside and began to work on the cables within the wall. In under a minute he had connected his own lines to the existing ones, and had plugged the black devise into a small module with a keyboard. He typed away furiously while glancing up and down the hallway.

 

“I will try to inform you of what is happening. Somehow they know we were coming today, and have intercepted our tickets. They don’t have emergency maintenance on DRGs, not ever. We are currently being led into a trap against groups of Salex security personnel, and when we don’t show up for our transport they will come looking for us. Here. We are lucky because they were planning of simply tricking us into going through the Dimensional rift and instead of leading to Earth-2 it would have led to a Salex holding facility. Right now I am hacking the security systems of the base to try and give us some time. I have already put all doors out of DRG 2 under fall out level security lock. That is where their teams will be concentrated.” As he said this he imputed another string of code into the small keyboard. Now that Nicolas knew the gravity of their situation he was looking up and down the corridor fearfully, and Zeckle had already hopped of his shoulder and switched back into humanoid form. She was once again in her scale armor, but instead of holding her sword they were at her sides, and she was holding a loaded crossbow.

 

“Well what are we wastin’ time for. Looks like it’s go time.” and at her words there were the sounds of muffled shouting from further down the hallway. The distant sound of footsteps began to grow louder.

 

“I am not finished yet. Hold them off until I’m done.” Announced Bestalel. The footsteps grew louder until a group of three combat armor dressed security personnel rounded the corner. Before any of them had looked in their direction there was a twang from Nicolas’s side. Zeckle had fired the crossbow, and the bolt that was sailing through the air left thin streams of black energy in its wake. It struck on of the guard with a crack and for a brief moment his force shell flashed briefly and then broke as the bolt dissolved into sizzling black energy. He crumpled from the blow as the black tendril spread out over his body slowly dissolving any exposed skin. The scream was gruesome, which alerted the other two to his plight, they dived behind the walls at the end of the hallway as another bolt struck the wall and stood there vibrating softly.

 

“Third law. Melt!” Roared Nicolas as he slapped his hands onto the floor. Two tendrils of his magical aura sped hallway and leapt onto the ceiling. Near the end of the passage the concrete began to melt under his magic’s effect. It dripped like candle wax onto the floor and began to harden almost immediately, it took twenty seconds until the wall separating them from the soldiers covered the hallway completely. With the barrier set up Nicolas turned to Bestalel again.

 

“What are we going to do now? We need to make it to Earth-2.” Nicolas asked frantically. He realized his voice had become high and shrill as the reality of the situation his him. They were in the center of the enemy stronghold, alone, and surrounded by people ready to kill them.

 

“We are heading for DRG room 3. From the security feeds it seems to be the least heavily guarded. I have already overridden the coordinate system, but all I can do from here is make sure they don’t lock me out. I need to be there in order to enter the coordinates.” He pressed a small button on the black module and the two cords reeled themselves back into place. He quickly got up stuffing the hacking equipment into one of his pockets and pulled another thing from the small pile of equipment that he had concealed in his coat. It was a slim energy hand-rifle. Its stock glowed with the indicator of how much of a charge it still had, it was nearly full.

Author's Note

well, chapter 33 is out. I plan to write one chapter a day and then write my other ideas down. I am going to keep doing this until I run out of Ideas.

Reviews

[Miss Coral]

A good chapter. You are still doing that thing with dialogue, which is going to be a lot of editing in the future if you continue with it. I've mentioned it before, a couple of times. There were also some more typos in this one. Good job though.

[James Watts]

Not a bad chapter, a little polish and I think it will be fine.

[Dutch Jr.]

Cool idea, Zach. This is a great chapter, as well. Keep up the good work.