Chapter 3: Taken

The aliens sent us a holovid, demanding to speak with our leaders. The government would have probably preferred to keep such a thing under wraps, the trouble was that the aliens sent the message to every corner of the colony. Their enraged faces appeared in every home and business.

Though I had heard of the aliens, as we had encountered their vessels many times, I had never actually seen one up close. They were a sight to behold. Gray skin, big, bald heads, and strange white glowing symbols covering their faces and arms. They had two slits that served as nostrils, small holes on the sides of their heads that served as ears, and large black eyes with no pupils. Although the aliens did have mouths and teeth similar to our own, they seemed to speak without moving their lips.

Our scientists said that they could communicate telepathically. In fact, it was believed that their entire message was one big telepathic communication to all of humanity. They were strange, but they were not as grotesque as I had imagined. I couldn’t have guessed what we had done to anger them so, but I had a feeling that it had something to do with the Dragon.

A rush of power reverberated through Ryan as Grafael brought his hammer down on the door, and not a moment too soon. Ryan felt his lifeforce draining into the black liquid that Leon and Hamma had referred to as Dark Water. It felt like he was being squeezed from the inside out. He could’ve sworn he lost at least twenty pounds while under that evil water.

The door busted wide open, and the water went rushing out into the hallway along with all seven of them. Ryan fell right on top of Leon, and Grafael came right on top of both of them. In a word, painful. It probably would’ve been less painful if Grafael was just a big fat guy like Skippy, but since his body comprised 99.9 percent muscle, and with muscle weighing more than fat, it felt like being crushed in between two brick walls.

Leon squirted black liquid from his mouth, and in a very undignified manner, he said, “Get off of me, you morons!”

If Ryan hadn’t just gone through a very dramatic near-death experience, he might’ve thought it funny to be sitting on ‘Mr. Popularity’s’ head. However, circumstances being as they were, Ryan simply burped out some Dark Water, and as gracefully as possible, he managed to extract himself from underneath the dinosaur man. Unfortunately, Ryan sat fairly close to Grafael’s posterior section, and just to make his interesting day even more interesting, Grafael farted in his face. Ryan could just taste the beef as it filled his nostrils with its stinky glory.

“Uh, my mouth was open, Graf! If I started a fire now, we’d probably blow up half the Ministry!”

Did he just eat the cow whole without bothering to cook it or something? Ryan decided that he didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

As Ryan gasped for breath, and not just from nearly drowning to death, he quickly took stock of his friends. Everyone seemed to be okay. Coughing and sputtering out black liquid, but okay. Then his mind immediately went to...

Éclair lay on her back with her eyes closed. She wasn’t moving. Ryan slipped and fell several times as he struggled to go to her side, but Leon beat him to it. Leon gave Éclair a gentle shove. She slowly opened her violet eyes and sat up groggily, but still managed her dazzling smile at seeing Leon.

Ryan blew a sigh of relief, though still felt a pang of jealousy at Éclair’s apparent affection for Leon. Then he heard another sputtering sound and noticed Skippy stirring on the hallway floor, covered in the Dark Water that had spilled into the passageway.

Skippy slowly got up on his elbows in a daze. He spat and coughed out the Dark Water, wiped off his face, and looked around confused. Then his eyes locked with Ryan’s and his bushy eyebrows dropped in anger.

“You did it, didn’t you!? You went into the bloody chamber and unleashed the bloody Mystic’s curse over the entire bloody Ministry! It’s not enough that we are about to go to war, is it? You have to bring the devil upon us all with ghosts and ghouls!” Skippy attempted to rise several times, but he kept slipping on the Dark Water, making it difficult for Ryan to take the guy seriously.

“That’s it!” Skippy sputtered as he tripped again and again. “I’m going to keelhaul the lot of you! I’m going to boil you in oil! I’ll make you walk the plank! No wait, we don’t have those anymore. I know! I’ll shove you all up the nearest airlock and shoot you into the sea of stars! Whatever I’m going to do, you can bet your bluebonnets that it’s not going to be-”

Leon snuck up behind the man and jabbed him again with a sleep-inducing telepathic strike. Ryan hoped the damage wasn’t permanent, he was beginning to like the guy with all his colorful threats.

“Sorry, Skippy,” said Leon as he looked around the hallway for his missing glasses.

Leon’s glasses had somehow managed to plant themselves on Tork’s nose whose head swiveled back and forth in confusion. “I say! Everything’s dark now! By Jove, the water has blinded me! I’ll be a cripple, a beggar, a blind Dragon living on the streets! How will I ever finish my poem? I guess I could sing it, but my voice leaves much to be desired.”

“Don’t worry, Tork,” said Leon as he extracted his glasses from the Dragon’s large snout. “I don’t think it will come to that.”

Tork blinked several times as if testing his sight. “Great Scott! How do you ever get anything done with such contraptions?”

Ryan started laughing. He didn’t know how or why, but when he laughed, Grafael joined him, then Éclair, then Tork, and eventually Rachel and even Kavic. Even Leon seemed to be cracking a smile, though Ryan doubted he would ever hear so much as a giggle from that guy.

As if coming out of a trance, Rachel spun around in dismay. “Wait a minute! What the heck are we laughing for? More importantly, what am ‘I’ laughing for? I nearly get killed because of you guys, and for what? To find some clue about the Mystic that may lead us to finding the so-called true conspirators besides the Water Elementals! Last time I checked, we still got nothing, and we still assaulted a fellow Elemental! Twice, actually!”

Looking down at the snoring form of Skippy, Ryan couldn’t help but think that Rachel might have had a point this time. Fortunately, Leon saved the day. “Actually, Rachel, we did not come out emptyhanded.”

Leon opened his hand to reveal a round, black microchip.

“Where did you get that?” asked Ryan, pointing at the strange object.

“It appeared in my hand after I touched that strange symbol and activated the booby trap. Hamma went to a lot of trouble to make sure that nobody found this. I have a feeling that if the Dark Water had killed us, this chip would’ve dissolved inside the liquid, erasing all evidence.”

“Leon, you’re amazing,” said Éclair, beaming at him.

Leon grinned wolfishly.

This time, Rachel and Ryan sighed in disgust simultaneously, and briefly shared a look of understanding between each other. They were both side dishes that had been pushed aside to make way for the main love story. Although, the feeling was a much-needed distraction from their recent horrors.

Whilst Ryan had swam in the Dark Water, he saw things that he never wanted to see again, things that still haunted him. The faces of his mother and father. The Elven children. Old man Alexander. The groundskeepers who lived next door. His best friend, Henry. Pretty much everyone in his life that had been taken from him appeared in those strange waters.

Ryan had wanted to give into the despair that threatened to take him, until he noticed the petrified expression on Éclair’s face, and he realized that she had gone through something similar. Ryan had then put his own feelings aside in order to help her. All this time that he’d been feeling sorry for himself, he never stopped to consider that maybe some of his friends had gone through something equally tragic.

Ryan didn’t know the details of Éclair’s past, but he knew that expression all too well. That face that people made when they survived something that gives them nightmares, something so horrible that it fills their waking hours with dread. That face of hopelessness and depression that Ryan had seen all too many times in his own reflection.

Since his vow to Hannah Lioness, Ryan promised himself that he would never give in to that despair again. Although he wasn’t thinking about it at the time, he had hoped that Éclair might start warming up to him; but apparently, she was still head-over-hills for jerk-face Leon.

Ryan cleared his throat, if for no other reason than to stop the little goo-goo eyes exchange between the two lovebirds. “So, we just need to get that to a terminal and see what’s on it, right?”

Leon shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. This isn’t that kind of chip. It’s not based on technology. It was made from pure Elemency.”

“What is it then?” asked Kavic.

Ryan wondered when this guy officially became part of the group. It took Ryan forever before anyone in Squad 99 would even listen to him. Suddenly this guy walks in who isn’t even a member of the Ministry, let alone the team, and already his voice seemed to carry more weight than Ryan’s. Though Ryan felt a twinge of jealousy, it was difficult to stay mad at a guy like Kavic who had such a kind face.

Leon rolled the chip through his fingers as if trying to determine how to best answer Kavic’s questions. “I’m not sure, but I know that this thing won’t work on any computer. Look.”

Leon held it up closer to the light, showing that the disk had slowly begun to disintegrate, melting into black ooze within Leon’s palm. “The Dark Water is dissolving it like I said. Pretty soon, there won’t be anything left.”

Rachel spread her arms in frustration. “Then I was right! We put ourselves through hell for nothing!”

“Not entirely,” said Leon, his eyes brightening with excitement for a second. “While I held it under the Dark Water, I was able to sense something from it. Images, feelings.”

“It must have something to do with your telepathy,” put in Éclair.

“Whoa, wait a minute!” said Ryan, becoming alarmed. “Leon has telepathy! Does that mean you can read my mind and stuff?”

Leon smiled somewhat creepily. “Don’t worry, Ryan. There’s nothing in your mind that I could possibly read.”

“Oh,” said Ryan in relief, but then frowned when he realized that it might’ve been an insult.

“As I was saying, when I was under the Dark Water with the chip, I was able to sense something from it. I think that this was how Hamma communicated with his employers without drawing attention to himself. It’s like a Dark Water transmitter. It communicates orders telepathically. It must have been geared to Hamma’s specific DNA, that’s why the trap went off when I touched that symbol.”

“So, did you get anything from the evil, chip thingy?” asked Ryan impatiently. “A location, or possibly the name of some nefarious bad guy who really doesn’t like us? Anything specific?”

“The disk was already dissolving, so I wasn’t able to determine any concrete information. But I can tell you that Hamma spent a lot of time at the east wing of the volcano.”

Suddenly, Ryan had an idea, which was great because it didn’t happen very often. “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I know what Hamma was up to! Follow me, to the east wing!” Ryan giggled to himself when everybody actually started following him. I’ve always wanted to do that!

“If I remember correctly, the east wing is under heavy security at the moment,” exclaimed Tork, who had taken flight above Ryan’s head.

“Don’t worry,” called Leon. “As long as you guys keep Ryan in check, I’ll be able to handle the negotiations without much incident this time.”

“And that is why we really need to get into the council chambers,” said Leon in his best appealing voice.

However, the two blond-headed Elf men guarding the entrance seemed particularly uncooperative, mostly because they didn’t seem to understand a word of basic (or at least pretended not to). Although most Demihumans simply learned basic, wrist communicators did come equipped with universal translators to avoid language barriers, though that proved little use to the young Lurranna at the moment. Leon had already tried using the universal translator on their wrist communicators to translate their conversation, but the Elves kept pointing at their own wrist communicators, as if there was a malfunction with the signal. Ryan suspected that the Elves were just playing a trick on him, messing with the signals so that he couldn’t understand them, but Ryan was pretty sure they could understand him. Elves did sometimes have impish senses of humor as Henry had often demonstrated. Each of the Elven guards had long blond hair, smooth fair skin, and were very slender as Elves tended to be. They were both High Elves, so they were taller than the Wood Elves Ryan had grown up with, and their ears were longer. Each wore the Red Armor of the Fire Ministry and had three notches on their shoulders, indicating their ranks as Thirds. Most Elves at the Ministry were half-Elves with human ancestry, so it surprised Ryan to see a couple of full-bloods.

“Sharama su vanala. Com grav te no.”

“‘Get in’, as in ‘entrance’,” stammered Leon as he pointed to the door repeatedly with both fingers. “We really need to get inside the council chambers. It’s very urgent.” Leon spoke respectfully, but Ryan could tell that he was slowly losing his patience.

The right Elf jabbed a finger at Leon’s chest, and said, “Vanala sun bal sharama! Com grav te no!”

Ryan knew what they were saying because of his time spent with Elves in Toramirese, but he enjoyed watching Leon squirm.

Leon groaned, rubbing his forehead in frustration. “I speak Latin, Chinese, German, as well as most surviving languages from Ancient Earth. I speak every Draconian dialect, every Dwarven variety, even Atlantean. Please tell me that you know at least one of those languages?”

The Elves looked at each other in confusion, then simultaneously, they pointed at Leon and a halo of white and yellow flowers appeared on his head. The Elves smiled, and said, “Cutse shill nek vul de la mo. Tila shon yuce moosey!”

Then the Elves started laughing together. Ryan couldn’t help a slight chortle.

Leon ripped the crown of flowers from his head and spun on Ryan, his eyes bulging with rage. “And I suppose that you know what they’re saying, Uruks?”

“Well,” said Ryan, cracking his knuckles. “I did grow up on an Elven colony. Step aside, pretty boy, and let me show you how it’s done.”

Ryan walked up to the Elves and spoke in Elvish. He was a little rusty, but he still knew the basics. “Hey, guys! How’s it hanging?”

The Elves stopped laughing in surprise. “You speak High Elven. Not many of your kind do.”

“Well, I’m a bit of a special case. So, you think you guys can let us pass?”

“Our answer is the same as it was for your four-eyed friend with the pale, unhealthy complexion. This is a crime scene. None shall pass except the investigation squad.”

“You’re in luck, ‘cause we’re the investigation squad.”

“Really?! I’m not sure the Minister would approve of such a young squad being put in charge of such a delicate task.”

Ryan smiled, a plan already brewing. After years of playing pranks on the Elven adults, Ryan had gotten to know Elves pretty well. Elves were naturally more honest and trusting than humans, but they weren’t stupid. However, they were also health fanatics. Ryan had experienced no end of mirth in convincing Elves that they looked paler than usual, or skinnier than was healthy, but the greatest clincher was when he said something about their weight.

Ryan once made the Elven librarian of Toramirese colony take two weeks off of work just so that she could commit herself to getting her figure under control. She didn’t even look bad, Ryan just said that she looked like she would make a good mother, and she assumed that he meant that she looked like she was pregnant. And thus, Ryan came up with the perfect distraction.

“Well, with all this chaos going on around here, all the squads are working overtime. So we just got promoted. Good thing, too, because I hear that there have been some pretty shady things going on with the cafeteria.”

Both Elves blinked in surprise. They looked so much alike that they might’ve been twins. “What kind of things?”

“Oh, just some rumors that they are using whole milk now instead of two and one percent.” The Elves gasped visibly, and Ryan knew he had them. “And that they’re replacing the wheat bread with white bread, or that they’re putting more salt in the food. Oh, and get this, none of the drinks are diet anymore.

“Slowly, they’re replacing all the foods in the cafeteria with cheap, fatty replicas, but they’re not even bothering to tell anyone in the Ministry. I only know this stuff because I’m on the investigation squad now. If you ask me, they were counting on this war to keep everyone so busy that they won’t ask any questions about the suspicious menu.”

The Elves looked queasy now, much the same way that Ryan had when he kissed Nanny Eliza. One Elf put a hand to his mouth as if on the verge of barfing.

“That’s why I’m so glad our team got promoted to the investigation squads. All our food is privately bought and under our control. No fatty substitutes for this guy. Why, I doubt that anybody eating from that cafeteria would be in any shape to fight at all.”

Suddenly, the two Elves dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups.

“So, is it okay if we go in and have a look around?” asked Ryan innocently.

“Oh, go right ahead! We’ll just be out here doing our exercises that we ... uh ... do every day ... at this exact time! Put more effort into it, Shifar, or we’ll never get our perfect figures back!”