Chapter 11: Back to the Basics
Garion didn’t end up getting any sleep that night. He kept having the same dream, replayed in his head repeatedly. He couldn’t make out much, but what he did notice was that there was some kind of cylinder-shaped machine with a hole in the center, shooting out some sort of dark energy blast into the sky above. The beam seemed to darken the sky completely; leaving no trace of sunlight anywhere around it. The sun had completely vanished from the sky, the dark, treacherous storm clouds produced from the machine hovering over the whole world; watching, waiting for it to act, waiting for it to retaliate.
Garion felt agonizing pain as he tried to crawl towards the machine, hoping to stop the evil force resonating from it. He kept crawling closer and closer to the machine, each step closer causing more pain to his insides.
The machine seeming to be the only thing he could recognize as a tangible object, Garion reached for it as a lifeline; hoping it would stop this agonizing pain he continued to feel. As he crawled, his head continued to spin, but he kept on crawling, the goal of the machine in his mind.
The machine seemed to be beckoning towards him, as well; an unknown force seemed to be pulling him towards the machine, begging for his arrival. It seemed to be as though it was a voice, coming from the machine, forcing Garion to keep trudging along.
As he approached the machine though, attempting to complete the mysterious forces’ task, something seemed to stop him dead in his tracks.
He looked up to see Draktos looking over him, laughing in joy. Draktos, cape off, took his foot and stomped onto Garion’s face, erasing all sight from him. Garion was able to hear Draktos’ sinister, cackling laughter in the background, as he continued with the act.
Garion would then wake up startled, survey the area for anything suspicious, then fall back into a deep sleep, only for the sequence to repeat itself, like a never-ending life cycle.
Nonetheless, the constant agony of waking up in the middle of the night startled did not seem to fade from Garion whenever the dream ended, since he continued to follow the surveying pattern throughout the whole, sleepless night. Every time he saw the dream though, he seemed to experience more of it.
From the sounds of the ocean in the background, to a tropical smell in the air, Garion noticed more as the dream repeated itself. It was like he was a detective watching security footage, looking for clues to the killer’s identity and whereabouts. Putting on the detective cap, Garion continued to survey the dreams, until, before he knew it, he could hear not the sound of a meteor, but of jets in his backyard.
Suddenly, he was violently shaken, as the bits and pieces of his dream started to fade away in the earthquake-like scene.
“Get up,” a voice urged him. “Get up.”
Garion opened his eyes in alarm, only to see Purstan standing over him.
“Get up,” Purstan said, “it’s time to go.”
Garion got up from where he was lying down, surveying the area. Everything seemed to be normal; the mansion was still a mess, the right side of the mansion was still completely gone.
Also, as Garion walked down the stairs with Purstan from his room, he noticed David and Greg’s bodies, both laid gently on the floor.
“It almost seems like they’re sleeping,” Garion thought, trying to keep that thought in his head as we walked by the bodies and towards the back door.
As Garion walked out the back door, he turned back one more time to look at the bodies. They were so peaceful that Garion almost convinced himself that they were just asleep. Then he reminded himself of the truth: they were dead, and they were just the beginning of what would probably a long and painful war. The enduring hardships and strife throughout the war would be horrid to bear, but would have to be done to survive. If Garion grieved this much over each individual death of his teammate from now on, he knew that he would be dead almost instantly and the TLS would be broken, the end of everything coming with it. And Garion knew he could let that happen.
“I will not let my teammate’s die in vain,” Garion thought. “They fought for me until the very end, and I will reciprocate their actions. I will kill Draktos not only for the sake of humanity, but for David and Greg.”
Garion then looked away from the bodies, throwing the thought of grief away from his mind, and closed the door behind him.
As Garion walked to the jet, he not only noticed his entire team standing beside it, but he also noticed that this jet didn’t look like anything he had ever seen before.
It was sleek and thin; seemingly undetectable by a normal radar. The jet being completely black, it seemed shaped like any other jet. The main difference was the sensors on either side of it, though. Seeming to be some sort of device (maybe used in combat), there were two small sensor-type machines on each side of the jet, each one covering a good chunk of the side of its wall. Another huge difference was the fact that this jet had no landing wheels. It seemed to be just sitting there, like a piece of junk named a museum relic. Garion started to question how they were going to even fly in this, and where they were going to be stored.
Garion then noticed that there was a small compartment towards the front of the jet for the pilot to step in and, at the back of the jet, there was a large, hollow part of it used as a storage facility. In this case, Garion and his team seemed to be the storage.
The pilot got out of the jet, looking around at Garion’s entire team next to him, standing in militaristic format, mostly out of fear of giving a bad impression.
The pilot, shock in his eyes, simply said, “Are you the ‘special guests’ the president briefed me on?”
“We know it’s probably not the kind of ‘guests’ you were expecting,” Mason commented, “but here we are.”
The pilot, not changing his state of shock, tried to move but felt stuck to the ground. There were real aliens. Right in front of him. Every conspiracy theory he ever heard throughout his life; at the bar, searching online, was staring him dead in the face. He could take pictures. He could make millions. He could finally pay off the debt he needs to fill for his home.
“Right this way,” the pilot said as he led them toward the back of the jet, clearing all of his thoughts and intentions as he did so.
He led Garion towards the back of the jet, helping him (along with the rest of the team) get situated in the back, seating each teammate down properly. Looking around this area, Garion noticed several small backpacks on shelves on the walls behind him.
Once the team were all situated, the pilot closed the big door to the back gate and took off.
As the jet was flying, Garion looked out the window.
In just the span of one month, his life had completely changed. He had traveled to different planets. He had fought in a battle. People have even died for him. The grief started to come back to Garion as he realized what he had done, who he had caused to suffer. Two dead the first day on the job, and for all Garion knows Draktos could be planning something as he spoke.
Looking out at the world beneath him (or what he could see of it), Garion knew that it was all for a good cause. If they didn’t stop Draktos from gaining access to the TLS, the world would be his for the taking. He could mold it, twist it, and form it in his own sick concoction of what he envisions Earth should be. He would have complete control not only over Earth, but over the entire universe, choosing what goes where and how it should go. The Earth would be his, and with that the rest of the universe. Garion, shivering at the thought of the universe ruled by a madman, then realized that all of these deaths would be just a small loss in the grand scheme of things, and something that may have to even be sometimes ignored.
“We were never really prepared for an alien attack,” Garion thought. “We never knew what was out there. I guess my team and I are the only hope for Earth’s survival.”
Purstan, noticing Garion being deep in thought, let him think instead of bothering him. He knew that Garion needed to take some things in.
&nb
sp; ...
Draktos, despite strong recommendations from his shadows that Garion will be there momentarily, continued to passionately work on his machine, refusing to leave until completion.
All he needed to do was calibrate the machine, and it would be done. Just a few more minutes, and then nothing, not even that horrible excuse for a gatekeeper, could stop him. Just a few more minutes, and he could control everything; the planet, the galaxy, the entire universe would be his for the taking. And it all started in a top secret military base in Quantico, Virginia. All he needed was just one more minute....
Suddenly, one of the shadows walked into the dark room, with only a single lamplight shining over the machine.
“He has arrived,” the shadow told him, “we must go.”
“Is everything ready?” Draktos whispered to one of his shadows.
“Yes,” one of the shadows responded, “the virtual room is all set up for Garion’s arrival.”
“Perfect,” Draktos responded. “He will never see it coming.”
Draktos walked towards the edge of the dark room towards what was visible of the door, pushing a big red button directly next to the door with a speaker above it.
“Attention shadows,” Draktos announced through the P.O. system, “I have just gotten word that Garion has arrived. This is it. The moment we have been training for, the critical point. After today, we will show the world that Draktos and his league of shadows exist! We will show them that we are not only real, but we are worse then the legend. We are the creators of evil! We are the monsters under your bed, the horror movies you watch at midnight! After today, we will show this to this miserable planet by taking it over! We shall break the TLS, and it shall be done in only about 4 hours! Now let’s get out there and set up Garion for his own demise!”
Draktos could hear the screams and chants of the shadows throughout the building, the shadows screaming being just a loud whisper.
He walked out of the dark room with two shadows accompanying him, and, as they walked outside of the room, what appeared on the other side of that door was president Tim Carter and his two bodyguards.
...
As the jet landed, Purstan nudged Garion from his train of thought.
“We’re here,” Purstan told him.
The big loading bay door to the back of the jet slowly opened and standing there was the President of the United States, Tim Carter, and his two bodyguards, one on each side. The two guards stepped onto the jet, helping each teammate off.
As the guards helped accompany the teammates, Garion walked off of the plane and approached the president.
“Welcome to Nevada,” the president said with ease as Garion walked off of the jet.
“Where exactly in Nevada are we?” Garion asked.
“That’s classified,” the president answered with a smile. “Come this way.”
The president led Garion, along with the rest of the team who had finished boarding off of the jet with the president’s guards, across a deserted airstrip and towards a giant building.
The building appeared to be a run-down hospital. Garion noticed the faded plus sign on the top of the building, along with multiple giant broken light-up letters hanging in various places on the building: H, S, P, L, O. He also noticed that the paint on the walls were past the point of fading; they were literally peeling down the walls. Garion could even see the plain wood in certain parts of the building.
But before Garion had time to question the building, the president opened the doors and led them through a narrow hallway with multiple doors, each one seeming to hold more secrets then the next. Garion stared from door to door, trying to quickly read the labels on the doors but at the same time keep up with the president’s quick and seemingly urgent pace.
When they reached the end of the hallway, the president opened the last door on his right, and Garion was amazed at what he saw. The entire room’s walls were coated in a green and black texture with no real pattern, and Garion also noticed that it wasn’t paint on the walls. Each strand of green or black throughout the walls had electrical wiring running down it. Each of the strands of green or black seemed to unique in its own way, following no design structure. Garion also noticed the control panel directly to his right, filled with what seemed like hundreds of different buttons, and the steep stairs below him leading to a wide open space filled with the strands of green and black and the wiring all along the floors and walls. He knew this was it.
“I bet you can probably guess what this is,” Carter said, motioning his hands towards the whole room.
“It’s...I don’t even know how to describe it,” Tyrone gasped.
Malix, looking at the control panel, asked, “How the hell do you expect us to use that thing?”
Garion then lightly punched Malix in the shoulder, reminding him of who he was talking to.
“Sir,” Malix added.
“Don’t worry,” the president responded, “I’m keeping one of our highly praised scientists here to work the control panel. He designed it himself, so I’m confident he will know how to use it.”
“Your ‘highly praised scientist’ could have made the machine easier to use,” Malix murmured.
Garion punched him in the shoulder again.
“I need to head off to a meeting,” Carter told them, eager to get back to his machine, “so I’ll let you get started.”
“Sounds good,” Garion responded.
So as quickly as he came in, the president was out the door and gone.
Garion then noticed the scientist coming in through the door right as the president left, and approaching the control panel. The man was no taller then 5 feet, and he had a hunch. His hair was in the shape of an afro, and he wore a lab coat that seemed to have been bought 20 years ago.
“This guy obviously doesn’t get out much,” Nirem thought, remembering his days in Steven Park High School.
“So,” the scientist asked in his very high pitched voice, “what shall I change your training environment to be?”
Garion turned towards his teammates, realizing, “I guess we relaxed so much yesterday we forgot to plan what we were exactly going to train about.”
“Luckily,” Mason mentioned, “it’s obvious on what we need to train on.”
“True,” Garion realized. “We know that Draktos and his shadows weakness is light, so all we have to do is find a way to concentrate that into some sort of energy beam that we could use as a weapon against him. But the real question is, how do we do that?”
“I think I can help and step in there,” Malix offered. “You see, on Mercury, the beings that live there are simply made of alien bacteria formed through the combination of molten lava colliding onto Mercury’s surface. That bacteria then molded into the hot molten lava that lands on Mercury every day. So, when we were formed, our only source of survival was the light of the sun constantly shone at us daily. We knew we had to use that to our advantage somehow, and then we later found out that the bacteria that was molded to form us actually attracts light. So when we noticed that, we started to use those light-attracting abilities we had to our advantage; using the light as energy to keep us surviving throughout our lives.”
“So,” Nelkima asked in shock, “are you trying to say that, to defeat Draktos, we need to take a piece of you and put it inside us so we can use the light attracted to us to defeat Draktos?!”
“Precisely,” Malix responded with ease.
“I don’t think you get what she’s saying,” Garion helped, “she’s trying to point out that we would have to kill you to get a piece of you inside us!”
“Actually,” Malix replied, “since I am the best light-bender in Mercury, I can not only use light as an energy source, but I can also change the formation of the light to my favor. Which means that I can bend the light that I attract to attract more light, and then shoot that new beam of light into each one of you.”
“English, please,” Garion
asked, confused.
“I’m saying that I can give all of you the ability to attract light.”
The whole team had a shocked and eccastic look on their faces at the same time.
“Well,” Mason asked, “what are you waiting for?”
Malix closed his eyes, and started to make very peculiar hand motions. He seemed to be moving his hands as if there was some cylinder shaped object in between them, almost like a ball about the size of a basketball. He acted with his hands as if he was feeling this basketball-shaped object, moving his hands all around the invisible object. Suddenly, something started to appear.
Garion’s team watched in awe as a ball made entirely out of light appeared in Malix’s hands, replacing the empty space that was once there. The team then noticed how inside the ball of light everything seemed to be going on at once.
Light was colliding with each other, separating apart, or just simply flying around the space of the see-through energy ball, as if frantically trying to escape its imprisonment. Suddenly, Malix, eyes still closed, stretched his hands farther apart from each other.
Seeming to be putting all of his focus and attention into the task, all the hyper particles of light inside the actual ball of energy suddenly stopped moving, and started coming together. Each individual particle seemed to come together in the actual beam of light and, when they finished doing this task, a small tornado seemed to form around the collected particles.
Then, as Malix spread his hands farther apart, the beam of light seemed to mimic his movements as they spread into smaller beams of light. Once this process finished, there were exactly 7 small beams of light; one for each team member.
Then, without warning, Malix shot each one of them into each teammate. Each person’s reaction was different. Some of them took in the energy, while others collapsed. Garion seemed to feel some sort of strange force inside of him, making his stomach feel bigger and bigger. The pain was agonizing; whatever Malix had just shot into Garion seemed to continue to suck in light, without warning or a possibility of stopping. Right as he was about to scream out in pain, the feeling suddenly stopped, and he sat on the ground in relief.
He also noticed that most of the team (besides the ones who were already on the ground, who simply seemed to relax) started to do the same, probably because the force in their bodies stopped sucking light in as well.
Malix, on the other hand, opened his eyes, dropped his hands, and looked towards the team.
“So,” Malix asked, “what do you think?”
The whole team just continued to sit on the ground, trying to relax after the pain that had just been brought upon them.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Garion spoke, “I think we’re ready to start training.”
Seeming to be the signal to get up, the whole team got off the floor and walked down the stairs.
The scientist, witnessing the whole event in amazement yet horror, asked, “So what should I make your training environment look like?”
Garion, already having the idea in his head, responded, “A dark mist of shadows surrounding us, please.”
“Are you insane?” Brendan asked.
“This is the only way that we will be able to truly test our powers,” Garion responded.
“Do you even know how to use them?” Nelkima asked.
“Well,” Garion replied, “that’s the fun of it.”
Without warning, the whole room was covered in a dark and eerie mist. The fog was so thick that Garion couldn’t see the teammate directly across from him. The entire mist seemed to surround him, like a rope slowly wrapping around him. As the purple-like mist closed in on Garion, he knew he had to act fast. He could smell the shadows, real or fake, slowly tightening their grip around him, ready to consume his soul in an instant. He then suddenly heard a voice from somewhere in the shadows, but he couldn’t tell where. It seemed to be Malix’s voice, though.
“O.K.,” Malix shouted the team, “to use your powers, you simply have to close your eyes, and concentrate. Concentrate on all the light inside of you, and let all of that light boil out into your hands, to be used as a weapon. Also, if you were paying attention, try to reciprocate the hand gestures I was doing as well. Most importantly though, let the light flow out from inside of you.”
Garion did what he was told. Closing his eyes, he put his mindset towards the light inside him, not letting any other thoughts into his head. Garion cleared his mind completely, the light inside him surging brighter than ever as he focused more intently into it. He even tried reciprocating the hand motions that Malix made, hoping that would help in any way.
Suddenly, he felt the light surge in his hands. The energy ball seemed to be growing larger and larger, as Garion got more excited. All the power in his hands, all of that energy. The key to beating Draktos was in his hands. As Garion got more excited though, the ball of light started to grow a bit too big. Before he knew it, he was on the ground, the blast recoiling and hitting Garion right in the gut. The rest of the team managed to clear away the shadows as Purstan came to check in on him.
“Are you O.K.?” Purstan asked.
“I guess I got a bit too excited there,” Garion responded.
“Indeed you have.”
Garion looked up to see President Carter staring down at his progress next to the scientist above him. Garion tried to smile as he got up from off of the ground.
“Didn’t see you there, Mr. President,” Garion chuckled as he got up.
“Yes,” Carter answered, “I just came up here to check on some things. How’s your training going, for starters?”
“I seem to still be behind my team in learning how to control light beams,” Garion jokingly commented, “if you haven’t already just noticed.”
“Perfect,” the president said out loud.
“What was that?” Garion asked, confused.
“Nothing,” Carter responded as if what he had said had never happened, “just for security purposes, what exactly do you think Draktos is planning?”
“Well,” Garion thought out loud, “I guess we’ve never really thought about it.”
Then Brendan, usually quiet, spoke up, “Well, in a way, we already know what he’s planning. All we need to do is add up the facts. We know Draktos’ weakness is light, so he is probably trying to build some sort of machine that blocks out light. Since our main source of light is the sun, his machine is going to most likely be able to block out the sun.”
Garion, along with the rest of the team, looked at Brendan in shock as Carter responded, “Very good. Actually, I should say spot on.”
“Thanks!” Garion responded in happiness. “Our team is trying our best.”
“Wait a second,” Brendan stopped him, “how do you know what Draktos is planning?”
“Spot on again, Brendan,” Carter responded, a smirk look forming upon his face.
He then motioned towards the scientist.
“Do it.”
With the click of a button, four steel bars shot out of the ground and, once they reached the height of the team, started stretching out towards the center of the square they had just created. Upon reaching the center, each individual steel bar of the jail cell seemed to spread down from the outskirts of the cage-like shape, stretching down towards the ground and forming a jail cell.
Immediately imprisoning them inside the cage, Garion felt trapped. Except it seemed to be a familiar feeling, Garion just couldn’t remember from where. As he looked around at the tic tac toe style jail cage, the thought hit him. The jail cells were made out of blue, electric bars.
“Mr. President,” Purstan asked in shock, “what are you doing? We’ve already told you numerous times, we’re the good guys!”
As the entire team seemed to panic, Garion raised a fist and the whole team fell silent. He then walked towards the edge of the cage, looking directly at Tim Carter.
“I’ll have to admit,” Garion admitted, “the di
sguise fooled me.”
Draktos hit the big red button on his car-keys-shaped remote again, revealing not only Draktos but the scientists true identities. As the two did so, the whole team watched in horror. But Garion simply watched.
When the deed was done, Garion asked, “Is the real president still alive?”
“Don’t worry,” Draktos responded calmly, “he is alive and well. So is the rest of this miserable planet. For now.”
Draktos walked towards the door with one last remark.
“Now, if you need me, I have a portal to create.”
Before he closed the door behind him though, Garion said with confidence, “Your never going to get away with this.”
“I already have,” Draktos laughed as he slammed the door behind him shut.