章 148: Chapter 137 - Hallucination or Reality?

Groans could be heard as a couple people wobbled their way from a smoking helicopter within a crater in the ground.

Elizabeth carried Mason – the photographer, and San – the biologist, away from the crash site.

Everyone else had barely managed to pull themselves a safe distance from the crash site. It didn't take a genius to figure out that helicopter leaks and fire would lead to disaster.

"What the heck was that?" Peyton asked as he dragged two of his men further away from the wreckage.

Good intuition was what kept Peyton alive through all the wars he participated in. When he saw the ape, Peyton knew it was time to fight back or run with all his might.

*BOOOM*

Suddenly, the helicopter exploded with shrapnel shooting in all directions.

The resulting explosion threw Brooks, and Bill into the nearby shrubs – no doubt suffering more minor injuries.

Brooks was a bit too slow due to the fixation of bringing along his computer from the wreckage.

After recovering from being thrown by the explosion, Brooks wasted no time and quickly began re-examining the results.

"Sir, this is impossible," Brooks muttered.

"What is it?" asked Bill as he stumbled to his feet and walked over to the group.

"The bedrock is essentially hollow. There is nothing beneath us," Brooks reported.

San jumped off Elizabeth's back "That's impossible, unless …"

"Yeah, it's a vent," Brooks said.

"A vent?" Preston asked.

"A vent, somewhere beneath the earth that houses beings that can no longer live above it," Elizabeth said as she shrugged "Or as your primitive races will know them – Huge Sink Holes?"

Elizabeth finished her last statement in a questioning manner as if asking if she used the correct comparison.

"Primitive races?" Preston asked "You sure talk weird for a human,"

Elizabeth looked back at him and grinned briefly, before turning her attention to James who was observing the environment.

"We need to go that way…" She said her eyes piercing through trees, caves, and dirt to look upon the face of her missing companion "Navigator you should navigate,"

James observed for a bit more before nodding "All the tracks in this area are heading towards that direction, almost as if all living creatures are being drawn there.

If there is an energy source that is where you would find it, but also many other animals as well,"

Preston snorted "We can handle a couple of big ones with all the ammo we have. Mills, Cole, Slivko – you're on the perimeter protecting everyone, triangle formation… I'll scout ahead with James where necessary,"

"Yes sir!" The three soldiers replied as they immediately demonstrated their military discipline by getting into position.

Just like that, the group walked for the next thirty minutes towards the location pointed out by Elizabeth, though they did have to diverge from the set path a couple of times at the advice of James.

Mason had been taking pictures the entire time, well that was her job after all.

Passing through a couple of shrubs, Elizabeth paused, and quicker than the eyes could see, she grabbed Mason and James leaping back a couple of feet.

*Swish*

A huge tail swept over their previous location, hitting nothing but rocks.

The rocks were rooted from the ground and scattered in many directions.

Mills was unfortunate enough to encounter a spiraling rock that impacted his head - killing him in an instant.

Peyton asked no questions, as none were required, he began shooting at the nearby trees and shrubs.

At that moment, it became apparent, a 20 feet long snake wrapped around a huge tree.

Cole and Slivko took a while to process the situation before they also joined alongside Peyton and brought hell onto the neigh impenetrable scales of the snake.

Elizabeth could feel the familiar energy the snake possessed and knew that it must have further mutated with the help of Alice's excess energy.

Good thing she had the perfect equipment for such a scenario, three silver balls flew from her hand and burrowed themselves into the ground.

Not long after, the extra scales on the snake began to revert until finally, it receded entirely. This allowed the bullets shot to finally penetrate the snake's skin – killing it after a couple of rounds.

"Weird…. Something siphoned the energy away from the snake," Brooks said as he flipped open his computer screen.

"I don't care, explain in English," Peyton said still a bit heated from the earlier battle.

San interrupted and made an easy to understand explanation "It ran out of energy to sustain the scales,"

Mason took a couple of pictures after thanking Elizabeth for saving her life. Unknown to them, Elizabeth just didn't want Alice's energy to remain on this planet – it could have adverse effects on animals and plants alike.

Alice, Zeel, and her own excess energy constituted of many types of energy but also had a little cosmic force courtesy of Lorien mixed it.

Allowing Lorien's Cosmic Force to interact with a primitive environment could lead to world-ending consequences.

Waving her hand, the balls floated back into Elizabeth's hands from below the ground. The silver-balls pulsed with an extra unique energy signature.

The battle was just a brief interlude in their journey towards the greatest energy source on the island.

On the way there, the group battled huge ants, butterflies, and even a giant hog that seemed intent on ramming them to death.

All easily dealt with, after the energy within the creatures were absorbed by the balls in Elizabeth's hands.

"So what do you hope to find?" Slivko said as he walked alongside Elizabeth.

Looking at Slivko for a bit, Elizabeth finally opened her mouth "There was a guy I liked when I was twelve years old,"

"Really? Guess he missed his chance?" Slivko replied a bit excitedly, thinking that he was finally breaking through Elizabeth's defenses.

"He was a nice kid. But I was on the run from the Mogadorians at that time. I didn't have time to indulge in 'liking' another person," Elizabeth said staring at the blue skies above "Sometimes I dream that I strangle him to death in front of his daughter and newlywed wife,"

Elizabeth then stared at Slivko and said "My husband once asked me? Did you ever like someone when you were younger? And I answered 'No!'. After all, it was merely a fleeting crush,"

"So?" Slivko asked a bit spooked at how Elizabeth was currently looking at him.

"So, do you think I killed this crush, or just hallucinated everything?" Elizabeth asked herself, not hoping for an answer.

Slivko no longer asked any more questions, since he genuinely felt afraid of Elizabeth for a moment just now.

Elizabeth was also slightly trembling since she was sure that she had killed her crush under Zeel's instigation.

That meant that Zeel's hold over herself and Alice was beyond what they initially thought. It made her want to get rid of the dreams, and soon she continued walking as codes flickered across her pupil.

The dreams had already been wiped from her memories entirely.

Preston walked over to James' side, who was a bit ahead of the group "What do you think of her?"

"What do you mean?" James replied a bit confused.

"She sensed that snake before we could see it, she carried San and Mason out of the helicopter. She jumped a couple of feet back with both you and Mason as extra weight. Is that normal?"

"A bit unorthodox but not something out of the realm of common sense yet," James replied as he sunk into thought "She was appointed by the Senator, maybe she was a former special government task force,"

"Yeah, just keep an eye on her. I don't trust her; the same way I don't trust that damn huge ape that f*cked us over," Preston said as he moved over to Mason's side.