Planet Chimera (19 page)

“If you keep talking, I am going to just
kill you all, right now,” I hissed, no longer amused with his
ability to peak into the madness inside my brain. “I am sure you
know how dangerous I really am.”

“Yes, I clearly do,” he whispered, removing
his finger from the rail, as the small compartment fell into utter
silence.

Grabbing the lock, my breath held, I pulled
the lock back with all my might—attempting to disengage the shackle
from the rest of the lock. In a small clank, it tore off, the
momentum and strength, inside my own body, felling me to the
ground. Thankfully, the running machines and screams of mortified
captives drowned the noise my body made, when it smashed against
the equipment in the back. I heard the door, on the ground, squeak
open slowly, and I shifted my body up, observing what was
happening. A dark, tanned man, looking cautiously around, pulled
himself out of the compartment and landed on the floor on his
belly. Sighing out loudly, he faintly smiled at me, before turning
his head around, and extending his right hand into the door. He
pulled out a small girl, roughly six years old, and based on her
physical looks—she appeared to be his daughter. She had black hair,
wrapped into double buns, a green jumpsuit with white stripes on
the side, black, leather boots, and in her right hand, she held a
stuffed teddy bear. Another child, a boy this time, came out next,
and he was trembling with fear. He had small incision holes around
his eyes and mouth, grey, shabby hair, and his hands looked wrinkly
and old for his age. I stood up, holstering my flintlock, and
plodded closer to see what was happening. More than ten people had
been lodged into this stink-fest of a compartment, and were,
probably, being subjected into some heinous experiment by the
madman.

“Take this,” I sighed, handing the man my
flintlock, my mind distracted. “You will need it more than I do,
and if you go unnoticed, you might be able to make it to the ships
in one piece.”

“Your compassion towards children is a
redeeming quality, Rave,” he smiled, grabbing the flintlock from my
hands, with his knee planted to the ground. “It is not a bad thing
to care for others.”

“I really think I am going to kill you,” I
hissed, shaking my head, as I turned around and began to walk away.
“The longer I stay here, the more I am tempted to snip out your
life.”

“Wait, Rave,” he yelled, running towards me,
and stopping inches from me. “The gun you are looking for is right
above you, located above those machines. It is guarded by three
powerful mutant chimeras, a special force chosen by the madman, and
they are very ruthless.”

“And what of the madman? Where will I find
him?” I asked.

“If you try to destroy the gun, he will come
to you; he is very protective of his special weapon.”

“You have my gratitude, stranger, and I hope
you make it off this planet in one piece. And if our paths do cross
again, I will more than likely try to claim your life, so stay out
of my way, and out of my sight.”

“I understand, and thank you for helping
us.”

Turning around, I scurried
forward behind the large, eroded pipe, staying out of sight. I
stopped when I saw a mutant chimera, standing above me, looking in
the opposite direction. It had the head of a ram, thick, muscular
arms, and was dressed in a golden armor with a black cape on the
back.
It must be a high ranking
officer
, I thought.

“Get those machines loaded, you buffoons,”
it boomed, raising its right hand up, and turning its head to the
left. “The master wants the new batch of prisoners tested as soon
as possible.”

“What should we do about the men in the
tunnels?” another voice asked, with a tone clutched by fear. “They
have killed more than fifty of us, and they will be arriving here
within the next five minutes or so.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them,” it replied in
a confident manner, placing its hand behind its back. “The master
has other plans for them, just wait and see.”

Feeling my insatiable killing urge, I
exhaled deeply, looking at the chimera with bloodlust. I curled up
the chain in my hand, looking in every direction first, before
throwing it over the chimera’s neck. I pulled the beast back, its
cape blinding me from what was in front of me, as I felled the
creature to the ground. My first plan to remain concealed had
failed—it seemed—due to my awakened, murderous intent. The power,
inside of me, was too strong for me to mentally control. The
monster shrieked, its eyes bopping out, and its hands clutched on
the chain around its neck. But before it could break free, I
whammed it three times in the snout with the socket wrench,
draining all of the energy from its body. A final kick to the
throat finished the monster off, seconds before it had the chance
to stand up and unveil its mechanical wings.

“What have you done to our boss?” another
mutant chimera growled, looking down at me, with its large cannon
pointed at me. “I will make you pay for this.”

“This is not going to be easy,” I commented,
chuckling softly. “I should have known that.”

15

To look at a bazooka, from the opposite
side, was not a comforting feeling at all. The mutant chimera,
angry and irrational, dropped off the pipe and landed on the
ground, its weapon still pointing at me. And as it moved in closer,
I took a few steps back, both of my hands raised in the air, and my
breath held. To attack a person holding a rocket launcher, head-on,
was suicide and reckless, even if I was immortal. The last thing I
wanted to do was lose my head again. The mutant chimera slowly bent
over, placing one knee inches from the ground, and placing one hand
below the dead monster’s neck, to check for a pulse. Wide eyed, he
took a swift glance at the dead chimera, before standing up again
with a look of hate.

“Hey, guys, the captain is dead,” he
muttered, holding a small device against his mouth, his eyes upon
me. “He was taken down by this unknown assailant I have captured.
We are next to the drain pipe on aisle thirty-seven, and I am
requesting further assistance.”

“Crap, that is bad,” the voice, on the other
end, boomed back. “If he moves, shoot him down; we are coming in
the next five minutes, over and out.”

A second after the radio
transmission ended, the floor was rocked by some sort of explosion,
causing most of the pipes to burst open with pressurized steam, and
the alarm to sound off. The mutant chimera fell to the ground, the
bazooka wrested from its hands, and when I saw this, I balance
myself from falling and began to move towards it. The heavy weapon
bounced off the ground, the tremor beneath the ground moving it
closer towards me. A bolt fell on top of my head, and I looked up
only to find a thick chunk of metal falling towards me. It tore
through a pipe, which was seven meters above me, making the whole
area around me an unsafe place to be standing on.
Run away or go for the bazooka
, I thought,
which should I
choose?

Any sane man would flee for his life, if
they had the chance, but I was an immortal man, a powerful gift
that I misused greatly on several occasions. And as I beheld the
falling debris, with my left hand rested against the drainage pipe,
I struggled to reach for the bazooka with my free hand; however,
the debris got to me first. All I felt was this stabbing feeling on
my right shoulder, a painful smack on my forehead, and the weight
of something heavy pressing against my body, felling me to the
floor. A clutter of falling objects fell on top of me and pinned me
to the ground.

“I should have run away,” I sighed, catching
a glimpse of the bazooka, a few inches from me.

“You won’t get away from me,” an annoying
voice rattled from underneath the debris, before something burst
through the clutter. “I won’t let you get away with what you did to
our captain.”

The hyena face mutant, drooling black
saliva, and red eyed, exploded through the wreckage, claws extended
outwards, headed for me. It tore through the metal hull, using its
sharp claws, with ease and opened its massive jaw up wide. So many
sharp teeth; it was like looking into the mouth of a great, white
shark. Turning my head towards the bazooka, I extended my hands
towards it, grabbing the grip and pulling it back, just as the
rabid mutant was a few meters from me. I turned my body, my backs
muscles popping unnaturally, and faced the creature with the
bazooka raised. Within inches from my body, I fired a missile into
its open mouth, sending it flying into the opposite direction, and
as it crashed into the wall, it exploded in a fiery blaze.

Machines parts began to fall to the ground,
fire and steam spreading, several people screaming at the same
time. I witnessed a mutant chimera fall, face first, into the
ground, a metal pike following shortly behind it, and it killed the
beast by piercing through its back. The whole place was beginning
to fall apart. If I was to guess, I would say it was the Vandrel
Guards who were responsible for this, or it could be the other
death-row inmates who were still missing. And either way, I had to
remove myself from this premises before things got too messy. The
only problem I seemed to be faced, at the moment, was being unable
to free myself from the debris that was pressing against my feet. I
tried to push away some of the stuff, but to no avail.

“Wait, I am immortal,” I sniffed, angling
the bazooka against the debris, in a reckless attempt to blow it
off me. “This will probably not wound me badly, I think.”

Pulling the trigger, my
eyes closed, I felt a powerful tremor beneath my feet, and this
painful rush of scorching heat. I could not hear or feel anything
below my waist, like there was nothing there anymore. Horrified, I
opened my eyes, assuming the worst, and patted my legs. Both of my
legs were covered in burns, a bit of smoke oozing from my left
knee, and a chunk of skin missing from my right ankle.
But at least the debris had been
blown
, I thought.

“Stop that fire, and secure all the
captives,” a voice boomed, followed by numerous footsteps. “I want
you all to contain this problem before it spreads to other
departments. The master will not tolerate this, so find the people
responsible and bring them to him.”

“Yes, sir,” a few voices replied in a
synchronized manner.

Upon hearing that, my heart began to race,
and I glanced down at my slowly, recovering legs. To my left, there
was a small place to hide, an opening where I could conceal my body
until my wounds had closed, and the bleeding stopped. The place was
hidden slightly beneath two pipelines and four monitoring systems,
a chunk of debris resting on top of it, and only accessible from
one opening. I pulled myself toward it, tracking the incoming
footsteps, and the flapping wings in the air. My hands scraped
against shards of glass and metal, the feeling in my legs
returning, as I tilted slightly and entered it. It was dark and
dry, a few bolts on the ground, but safe. I huddled in a corner,
the rocket launcher in my lap, listening to the gunfire outside. I
could hear screaming noises, terrible roars from the mutant
chimeras, and a distinct screech of some sort of sound weapon. It
was chaos on an epic proportion, and it pained me deeply that I
could not see it with my own eyes. I waited, resting my body, for
ten long minutes, and finally felt the feeling of pain come back to
my legs. I could move my feet again.

“I love being immortal,” I commented, a
smile on my face.

I finally crawled out of the hiding spot,
and looked in every direction with caution, hoping not to walk into
an ambush. The area was clear; all of my enemies, and all of the
fighting, had been moved to somewhere else. There was a lingering
silence, all around me, a bad omen for terrible things to come. I
stood up and walked around, my sight limited by the smoke and hot
steam. There were piles of mutant chimera corpses, as well as dead
bodies of the innocent bystanders, who had been caught in the
crossfire. I hopped over the pipes, jumping over the outer portion
of metal machines, as I made my way to the other side. Dirty water,
from one of the broken pipelines, soaked through the ground,
releasing a smell of wet dog fur. Most of the machines, which had
been previously anchored above the ground, lay in ruins against
each other—their gears scattered in every direction. And upon
reaching the other side, I found myself looking onto these stairs:
one staircase going up to the next floor, and other descending onto
the sections beneath. On the right wall, there was a blue
instructional map, diagramming the whole complex into different
sections, and according to what I was reading, I was one the second
floor. And they called this atrocity of factory: The Monster Maker.
A name that truly befitting of such a terrifying place. And while
debating on which direction to go, I heard gunshots, somewhere on
the third floor, and I bolted for the stairs, clambering up to the
third floor with haste. Stopping in my tracks, on the marble floor,
I gazed up at the mechanical bodies, which were hung on chains.
Some of them had skin grafted halfway, below their waists, and
others were just gears and bolts. Their feet dangled a few feet
from the ground, their metallic heads facing the floor, and their
shoulders hunched over. By my estimate, they were at least fifty of
them, all stacked in columns and rows, the arrangement almost
resembling a square in shape. On the side, next to the monitors and
visual machines, I caught a glimpse of a conveyor belt with
something strange on it. It looked like the skin, like real human
skin. I felt a sudden temptation to pick at it, to unveil this
immoral abomination, and carefully scrutinize it to my fullest
extent. I was wicked, I knew, a truly, malevolent, deceitful liar
of catastrophic levels, but I was nowhere near this evil. This was
something else completely, something I had to fight with all of my
full power. And, yes, the skin was real, and it had been taken off
some poor soul’s body, hopefully, dead.