Zevortro

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  As he looked at Jessie, Zevortro gripped his weapon tighter. At first, he thought nothing would happen, but then they had all seen the scanning beam. As the beam moved over their footprints, Zevortro held himself back as he readied himself for a running battle.

  After it left, the group all looked at each other and Zevortro saw worry in Bryke’s eyes. Before he could say anything Jessie held up a hand and scowled. He looked at them all and then moved towards the round chamber.

  Zevortro almost stopped him but he stopped. Jessie was a Bounty Hunter who had survived in that dangerous profession. He would know how to spy on things and get past security systems. Like it or not, Jessie was the expert here and now, that was what they needed. An expert to lead them and keep them all alive.

  He came back a moment later, a scowl on his face. “The bot was another flyer, and it went where we came from. It’s going to come back soon, and we need to choose. Go down this tunnel or the one across from this one. I’m leaning towards the other one!”

  Zevortro looked down the tunnel, a scowl on his face as he looked back at Jessie. “Why, what’s wrong with this one?”

  Jessie only looked at him and sighed. “You can’t see it? If those pictograms are about certain locations, then this one leads to the forest.”

  Zevortro felt his center of gravity shift as he tried and failed to think of anything to say. The fact that they were with their backs to the home of those things was bad enough. The fact that the doorway might be open was another. The one thing that he knew was that they did not have the weapons or supplies needed to handle all of those things.

  “Oh,” Bryke said faintly as the words reverberated around the group.

  “You mean the forest with all the flyers?” Terra asked faintly.

  “Let’s not go that way!” Zevortro exclaimed and Jessie nodded.

  “Right, so let’s move before that thing makes it back here!” Jessie said as he led the way out of the side cave. Within moments, they were crossing the circle and Zevortro looked down the tunnel the robot had gone down. It was out of sight, most likely having already passed the turn. As they all ran down the other tunnel, the screens all around them started to change. After they had run around fifty feet, the tunnel started to show long red strand-like plants, a forest of them. As the first took up all of the tunnel projectors, Zevortro felt that something about this was designed.

  “Okay, another point towards this being a cruise ship,” Zevortro breathed in a low voice full of awe.

  “Yeah. This is the entrance or maybe just leading to an attraction?” Terra asked, her voice soft.

  “Makes sense to our minds for this to lead somewhere, but I don’t know about that. That’s if you're right about this being a cruise ship,” Bryke said with a hard edge to his voice.

  “What do you mean?” Jessie asked softly.

  “Keyword here is alien,” Bryke as a large serpent-like creature swam by ‘over’ their heads to the right. “We got no idea what these people thought was something good. For all we know, this could be cultural or religious!”

  Zevortro had to admit that the answer to that question was complicated. They had no idea what these people liked, besides nature. But then they were dealing with a new species, and that could mean anything. For all they knew, this was the basic for them and the group could be in service tunnels.

  “Just keep your eyes open, and stay alert. Anything could come out at us from anywhere!” Jessie said fiercely. “Wait, what in the stars?”

  Zevortro looked up and saw that the dark forest had gone away at a single point, the next screen was a different scene. From above came lights as fish every color of the rainbow swam around. They were all long and thin-bodied fish.

  “What is this? Some kind of aquarium?” Bryke asked as he looked at the screens around them, trying to anything something. He looked at the others, a scowl on his face. “What, does this mean that this was all recorded someplace?”

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  “Yeah, where’s the prey species? Are they filter feeders?” Terra asked with a chuckle, and then she stopped. Looking at the screens harder, she frowned as she looked at it. “Wait, could that be possible?”

  “What are you talking about?” Zevortro asked and Terra looked at him with a crazed look on her face.

  “Filter feeding is one of the most creative ways that sea life has evolved to eat. There was a theory that if we could create smaller fish like that, well we could solve a few problems. There has never been a creature discovered like these things!” Terra said with an exsiccated look in her eyes. “I mean, the worlds these things and a few miles of aquaculture could feed!”

  “So they could be a staple food source then? Interesting,” Jessie said with a slight scowl as he looked at them.

  Zevortro gazed at him, and the look in Jessie’s eyes was strange. It was like Jessie was seeing something that they couldn’t. Something that was so beyond them that they were still playing catch up.

  “Jessie?” Terra asked and everyone turned to face her. She was looking at Jessie with a look in his eyes that almost made Zevortro feel concerted.

  Jessie only looked at her and then he sighed. “Sorry, there’s just something about all of this. It’s just another puzzle piece.”

  “How’s the picture coming?” Terra asked, and Zevortro was shocked by how scared Terra sounded.

  “It’s getting clearer. But for now, we might not be in trouble if we keep moving!” Jessie said as he turned and ran down the tunnel.

  As the others followed behind him, Zevortro looked at the fish out of the corner of his eye. If these things were bothering Jessie, then that meant something. What he didn’t know yet, but there was something here that he didn’t like at all.

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  ?????????????????

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  The drone hovered down the corridor, not seeing anything that showed where its target was. The fact that it was following behind footprints wasn’t something that it registered. All it had was directed programming and a target gene source to hunt, others were like dust. As it floated down the tunnel, the drone kept recording. The little thing couldn’t reason, all it could do was acct according to its programming.

  Finally, it reached the end of the tunnel, and when it saw the door open it started to scan it. After a few minutes, it was done and while it had found genetic traces, none of them had the markers it was looking for. Looking through the programed responses it had to go on, it 'thought' on what to do. Finally, it selected the one that made the most ‘sense’ and turned around. It had a job to do and it would do it. One final check and then it would return to base.

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  Terra

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  As she moved after her friend, Terra felt a terrible feeling growing within her. She had seen a lot when she and Jessie had fought together, and times like this were the worst. Jessie had seen something, something that made sense to something within him. He hated to be wrong, so she knew there was only one thing that he could do now. Stay silent and keep hunting for the ‘pieces’ that he didn’t have. That was something about him, he only told his theory when he had everything that supported it. The fact that they had been able to let him slip the idea that this was a bio-weapon factory was amazing. Normally, he would be a lot more secretive about everything.

  The problem was that when he did that, it always ended up being something big. Always.

  As they ran along the tunnel, she looked to the left side and then went still. “GOOD STARS!”

  “Terra!? What is it…… oh,” Jessie said as he saw what Terra had.

  She heard the others stop as well and Bryke started to curse. She couldn’t blame him, they were looking at a strange biped-looking skeleton. Its front limbs had four fingers and two thumbs, and its head had four eyes in a square formation. Between them was a silted mouth and its feet ended in three talons. And it was small, only around three feet tall.

  “Is that one of them?” Zevortro asked in a whisper.

  Terra looked at the body and then at the tunnel around them. She frowned as she took everything in, and then she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. The only way that it would be if it was one of their children.”

  “How’d you figure that out so fast?” Bryke asked shock in his voice.

  Terra just shrugged and looked back at the body, her nanites recording everything she saw. For once, she was happy she still had that strain. “I used to be at school learning to be an archeologist a long time ago. And I’ve read a lot of reports about bodies found…… wait. Those bones are too clean. Could predators have come through here before? Wait, then they would have? Does that mean?”

  Terra felt her eyes widen as she looked at the body, and then slowly she walked on, looking at the walls. She heard the others follow behind her, but her mind was beyond them. There was one thing that could explain this but she was shocked at what this meant. But the more she tried to deny it, the more she figured out thoughts that brought this together.

  “Hey, you okay?” Jessie asked from behind a moment before a hand fell onto her right shoulder.

  Terra only nodded as she looked around the tunnel, making a small gasp as she looked ahead. The others joined her and she heard Bryke start to curse as Zevortro gasped in horror.

  On the walls were many of the same skeletons, all of them the same height and with nothing on.

  “I was right. That was a burial pool,” Terra whispered in shocked awe.

  “What?” Jessie asked, his voice showing what she knew as shock.

  “Burial Pools! It’s a kind of funeral for societies that don’t have much land! It’s kind of a burial at sea! You only…. You only,” Terra said as her eyes widened in shocked horror. She threw her hands over her mouth as she looked at the one truth that this revealed. The number of dead bodies, the way they were thrown in, everything pointed to only one answer.

  Jessie meanwhile looked at her in shock, and then he covered his eyes as he shook his head. “NO! No Terra! Don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me! Just don’t, okay? Tell me anything else, please!”

  “What are you talking about!?” Bryke demanded with a growl.

  Terra looked at her friend and prepared to tell him what she had figured out about this place. And to tell the truth, the answer she had come to scared her so much.

  “This thing, it has been down here for so long that sentiency evolved. This is showing a mass grave,” Terra said with a hard look in her eyes.

  “What?! With all those things out there, something that could have evolved here?!” Bryke exclaimed in shock as Zevortro’s mouth dropped open.

  “Yeah, and they evolved enough to develop a culture and a concept of death. This is amazing, it challenges everything that we thought we knew about evolution! Who knows what else evolved here?!” Terra said as she looked at the screen. Then she blinked and looked at it with another long look. “Oh. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Jessie said with a scowl.

  “What is it?” Zevortro asked, his voice full of terror.

  “The question is, what happened to these things?” Terra asked softly.