Chapter 4: Chapter 4 Done Talking
Making his way down the trash mountain, the Uz'En below noticed him quickly, and started to assemble.
"Who are you?" the leader demanded, standing a hair shorter than Dustin.
"I am here to take all of you away from this awful place. There is a planet where others like us live, that is much better than this place."
"That is what the masters said, when they brought us here. Why should we believe you, stranger?"
"Do you have devices to aid you in surviving here?" he asked, in confusion. The PED's he had sent, should have explained things, and made it easier to collect them. They were acting very aggressive and hateful towards him, that made no sense. They should have felt that he was their king, on a spiritual level.
"We only have that which we find. I don't know what devices you may speak of."
Dustin looked around at them. They were filthy, starved, dehydrated, and sick. How did they not have the PED's?
"Are you open to the idea of leaving this hellhole for a better place, or not? You will all die, here."
"Everyone dies, sometime. Why not here, surrounded by loved ones?"
Dustin gritted his teeth. He had always sucked at talking to people who were intent on being asses. What was this idiot's problem?
"Are you hungry and thirsty?" asked Olivia, coming closer holding a bag of what looked like mushrooms and a jug of water.
Dustin didn't ask where she had gotten them, but figured that was why it taken her so long to join him.
They snatched the food and water from her, and immediately began passing it around. It wasn't nearly enough. They were fighting over the bag, even though it was empty, and ripped it to shreds. The jug met a similar fate.
"Dustin, this is bad."
He nodded. "There's plenty more, where that came from."
The leader, who was still chewing his piece of mushroom, narrowed his eyes.
"You will not be able to bribe us. Leave! We have nothing here for you."
Olivia stood there, waiting while Dustin mulled over his next course of action.
"Are you still hungry and thirsty?" he asked a small child that was sitting on the ground not to far from him.
"What are you doing?" growled a woman, rushing over and picking the child up.
"Are you trying to eat our children?" exclaimed the leader.
"Oh, for crying out loud! This is stupid!" cried Olivia, throwing up her hands.
"You're right, I'm done talking."
Dustin sent the few nanobots that were left to him, down into the trash to start replicating. Olivia noticed and started to back away.
"Dustin, I thought we agreed no nanobots? That's going to alert the locals and cause a shit-ton of trouble."
"I thought you were the one who said I needed to grow a backbone and just grab and go?" he growled, as the new nanobots began to assemble themselves into small pods.
The Uz'En, upon seeing the nanobots, turned tail and ran. They didn't get very far, though. Dustin sent the pods after them, snapping them up like metallic beasts. As soon as the pod was sealed it pointed itself to the sky and shot off. He would gather them later.
It only took a few minutes to grab them all, and the entire valley was empty. Every last man, woman, and child had been grabbed.
A rumble behind them, notified them, that the locals had sensed the nanobots. Before they could do much more than turn to look behind them, the entire mountain they were standing on began to heave and shift.
Ships flew into sight, spitting giant robots out that landed heavily, causing the mountain side to become unstable.
(INITIATING EVOLUTION)
(EVOLUTION COMPLETE)
They jumped into the sky, using their wings, and started to fly away. Bolts of plasma were being shot at them, and it took everything they had to dodge them.
Flying down into a valley, they both suddenly found themselves falling. A ship above them had turned on some kind of gravity well that made their wings useless. Hitting the ground hard, they slid down for a long way, until they found themselves out of the well.
"We need to hide, until they stop looking for us," suggested Olivia, folding her wings.
"We could just smash them?" suggested Dustin, glancing at the approaching robots.
They were made of a material he didn't recognize, and a device on their shoulder, made him pause. It was the new EMP he had heard about, that was specially designed to combat his nanobots.
Glancing around quickly, Dustin spied one of the tunnels from before, and after a moment's hesitation, he darted for it. Olivia followed right behind him.
"This is a bad idea," she cried, as they dived into it.
"I'm not really wanting to see what those new EMP things can do to my personal nanobots just yet," Dustin replied as they scrambled down the tunnel.
It was surprisingly well made, reinforced at just the right points, and just big enough that they didn't feel an immediate need to evolve into a different form. There were even small vent holes that allowed the air to not be too stale.
Far behind them, they could hear the robots digging, trying to follow them, but then there was a rumbled, and it was quiet.
"They just collapsed the tunnel, didn't they?" he asked, without stopping his descent.
"Sounds like it."
"Well, shit. This tunnel better travel back to the surface eventually, or we're going to have to dig out on our own."
"Yep."
Up ahead, they could see that the tunnel ended soon, so they slowed. It had been a huge descent, and they were both wary of new dangers. Stepping out of the tunnel, they found themselves on a platform high over a great open area. The entire chasm that spread out before them, was lit by groups of glowing blue lights.
Pillars littered the massive cave, with scaffolding around each one. Workers of some race were digging the blue glowing lights out of the rock and loading them into wagons that were then pushed away.
"It's a mining operation," said Dustin softly.
"But what are they mining? I've never seen anything like that before."
Chapter 5: Chapter 5 Uz’En Precursors
"Hey! Who are you?" cried a man, as he came up the path towards them. Several cloth bags were tied to his side, probably in order to get things from the surface.
"My name is Dustin, and this is Olivia. We were chased down this tunnel by giant robots, and I'm pretty sure it was collapsed."
'Well, that's not good. Look, if I were you, I'd go over to that tunnel, over there, and head back up to the surface. You don't want any of the taskmasters to find you. They'll put you to work, and you'll never be able to leave."
"What? Why not?" asked Olivia.
"They put their eggs inside of you, and if you leave, the eggs will hatch and eat you from the inside."
"Then why are you leaving?"
"They just refreshed my egg. I only have a limited amount of time to get back before the egg hatches. See ya!"
They watched the guy jog off towards the other tunnel, and disappear."
"Eggs? Really?" muttered Olivia with a shake of her head.
"I guess it would work for these people. I wonder if there's any Uz'En down here."
Continuing down the path, to the ground floor, they watched as the workers mined glowing crystals out of the rock.
"Do you think the crystals are radioactive?" asked Olivia.
Dustin scanned one and jerked back away from them.
"They're not radioactive, they're alive!"
"Really?"
"They eat the mineral around them and emit a glow as waste," said a worker. "We have to keep mining them, because they die after a while and have to be replaced. The master's aren't very smart. Are you new?"
"Yea, but we better keep moving," said Olivia, raising her hand in thanks.
The guy nodded and went back to carefully chiseling the orb out.
Dustin sent out a swarm of nanobots, too small to see, to search for Uz'En. If there were any down here, he didn't want to leave them.
"Maybe we should get a sample of these things?" asked Olivia, looking at the soft blue glow of a cart full of the orbs.
Dustin touched one of the orbs for a moment, just long enough to get a sample, then jerked away from it. For some reason he felt an intense desire not to touch them.
As the nanobots started to return to him, he was getting conflicting results. Some of them said that the people around him were Uz'En, and others said they were not. It didn't make sense.
"Hey," he said, pausing next to a guy who was in a corner, obviously in pain. They were out of sight of anyone who might be looking. "Are you okay?"
"My egg hatched. You should probably get away before it gets out and comes for you," the man panted. His brow was stained in sweat and his breath was ragged.
"Let me save you," said Dustin reaching for him.
The guy looked at him incredulously, then looked like he would laugh if he wasn't in so much pain.
"Sure, whatever. I'm a goner anyways."
Dustin touched his chest, and sent a stream of nanobots into his body. There was a huge parasite ravaging his gut, eating everything it could. He had the nanobots take care of it by killing it, and then eating it.
(DUSTIN, THIS INDIVIDUAL IS READING AS A UZ'EN, BUT ISN'T A UZ'EN.)
'How is that possible?'
(IT MAY BE THAT THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE SIMILAR TO UZ'EN, OR A PRECURSOR.)
'Would a PED work on him?'
(THE CHANCE IS VERY HIGH.)
With a nod, Dustin slapped the nanobots into a PED and forced him to go into a change. He turned blue for a moment, and his eyes widened, before he returned to normal.
"There. You're good now."
"What did you do?"
"Fixed you."
The guy opened his mouth, then shut it back. Shaking his head, he ran his hand through his hair.
"Look, there are tons of us down here. We're bred as slaves. Do you think you could save us all?"
"That's what I'm here for," said Dustin with a nod.
The guy nodded and waved for them to follow him. On the other side of the tunnel he took them down, he crouched, and the followed his lead. Pointing at a hulking figure, they watched as it grabbed a man who approached it willingly. It shoved a tentacle into his belly button, wiggled around inside him for a moment, then retracted it. He fell to the ground, holding his belly for a moment, writhing in pain, before crawling to his feet and moving away.
"It sucks out the old egg and puts a new one in. If you can't get back before the egg hatches, they leave you to die. You only get a day before the egg tries to hatch, but sometimes it's less. Everyone generally tries to get their eggs changed out twice a day, to make sure that they don't risk getting an early hatcher."
"That's horrifying!" whispered Olivia with a grimace.
Dustin was just staring in horror. The hulking figure had turned and it looked like a giant tick with tentacles coming out of its chest.
"Why does it have to be bugs?" he whispered.
"Dustin," said Olivia, grabbing his arm, but he was already moving.
(INITIATING BLADE HANDS.)
(EVOLUTION COMPLETE.)
He walked up to the thing, and it turned to grab him. Before it could lay a hand, or tentacle, on him, he swiped at it with his blade hands. Its skin was surprisingly thin, slicing easily. Eggs spilled out on the floor, as well as newly hatched worms.
People all around watched in horror as the thing gurgled and fell to the ground.
"Who wants to get the damn eggs out of them?" he asked, changing his hands back to normal.
"Can you?" whispered a woman, stepping forward.
"He removed mine," said the man, stepping forward.
They quickly crowded around him, quietly waiting for him to get to them. Sending the nanobots to replicate, he started making PED's for them all. It wasn't long, after he fixed them, that they spread out, sharing the news. He was going to be here a while.
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