The Plasma Master

  Chapter 33

  I hate. Dark Viper used the verb intransitively because for some reason the hatred had no focus. It was just there, and for the moment nothing else was. I hate. Once there had been reason, purpose, even power, but that was all gone now. Now there was only the hatred. It was everywhere; it was everything. For Dark Viper, nothing else in the universe existed.

  No, there was something else. A memory? Yes, a memory of something that seemed to have happened a very long time ago. Faces. People. I hate. Who were they? Had he known them? Yes, them. He knew them. The faces. Nedward Simmons. Mirana Kelar. I … hate … them.

  His eyes snapped open, and suddenly it all came back to him. Nedward Simmons had stolen the Matrix Crystal from him, and Dark Viper had been forced to destroy it in order to prevent others from sharing the power. When the Matrix Plasma that held Venom together had been released, the entire superfortress had come apart. Dark Viper had made it to his escape craft and jumped to warp speed before anyone else had managed to leave Venom, but he was willing to bet that others had escaped as well. The memory burned within him, and the hatred increased. Nedward Simmons. Mirana Kelar. Yes, I hate them.

  But the memory was of something else as well. There had been something else before the hatred, something important. Plasma. Power. Was it really gone? The feeling of immortality he had enjoyed had vanished. Already there was a pain inside him that he had not felt for longer than he could remember. Hunger. Thirst. He looked at his right hand. The light had gone out. The power was gone. No.

  No, it could not be gone. It was not gone. Only the Crystal was gone; the power remained. It was unharnessed, uncontrolled, but the power remained. Dark Viper extended his hand, feeling for it, reaching for it as if it were the last lifeline left in the universe. For him it was. For him the power was everything.

  Yes. The power was still there, waiting for someone to take it. Waiting for him. He reached out to it and drew it to him, remembering what it had felt like before. It did not come all at once, and it did not come easily, but it came. He did not need a Crystal. Nedward Simmons had not needed a Crystal do teleport away from him or to attack him with that cursed blue light. Dark Viper did not need a Crystal. Only the power. The power. The power!

  His mouth opened to reveal a row of hooked teeth. Set back in the scaly flesh of his face, Dark Viper’s eyes glowed green.