Spider: *snarl* he should've left some of that slig fer me to pummel *cracks his knuckles*

Oy i wasn't expecting that Rett. Love it anyway *grin*. Oh and don't mind Spider...he has a strong parential instinct...seeing kids get mistreated really gets his goat...

Spider: Yer better believe it! I wish i did more ter that one slig who beat up...

AH! No spoilers from the your fic!

Spider: oops sorry...

here's a short chapter to whet your appetite.

in the next chapter, it begins...

CHAPTER 30

To be totally honest, and to my shame, I had completely forgotten about my fellow stowaways, except for Quiss, and felt extremely guilty when I saw Vint, Yan and the others standing in the cell with the other slaves. He seemed a little surprised to see me, which was probably because the other slaves had told him I was dead. Considering what happened later that day, it would probably have been better if I had been.

Quiss, conscious for once, was the first to break the silence. “You’re alive!” He got weakly to his feet, and crossed the room to me, throwing his arms around me. “They said you were done for…”

“Not quite. Not yet anyway.” I set Hap on the floor, and she ran to Laur, who embraced her. “Vint, we need to get out of here. These people said no, but I’m going, and I’m taking Hap and Quiss with me. I think we have a chance; one guard is dead, and I haven’t seen the other since the first hit him. Are you with me?”

Vint smiled emptily. “I’ve spoken to Gil. We’re all going.”

“Really? What did you say?”

“We told them about the real world, and persuaded them that even death is better than this.”

I almost grinned, despite the seriousness of the situation. “We should go now; the other guard might be back any minute.”

Vint nodded. “Come on everyone, let’s get moving. Who knows the city best?”

There was a murmuring, and Gil was pushed reluctantly to the front of the crowd. “I can lead you to the main gate, but we’ll never get out, even if we reach it.”

“Well, we’ll have to take that chance. We’re not backing out before we start.”

I kept one arm around Quiss’s shoulders, and held out the other hand to Hap, who ran up beside me. I looked round at the crowd behind us, seeing blank faces, dead minds, broken by years of slavery. I tried to see some spark of hope there; I saw it in most of them, but some were too far gone. There was little chance of them ever regaining their own self-respect, but then there wasn’t really much chance of anyone surviving this escape attempt. I looked at Yan, Ulp, and Rixx, who were helping to carry Olek with us. This might be the last time I see any of you, I thought. I had faced death before, almost constantly since… since killing Zell. I was sort of prepared for it, although it had never been quite so hopeless before. Okay, so a guard was dead. That maybe meant we could get out of the slave quarters, but how many hundreds of guards would there be in the rest of the city? I got the feeling I had used up my stock of luck already.

I turned, to face Gil, who was preparing to lead us out.

“Come on then, let’s get on with it.”

This story is great!
hey rett, what is your icq #?

HEY! I RESENT WHAT HAPPENED IN CHAP. 27! NOT ALL BB SLIGS ARE LIKE DAT!
at least I'm not
anywho, keep the story goin!
readin this is like drinkin coffee! (it's good but it sometimes burns ya tongue!)

thanks for the replies, bb. unfortunately, i am not at home right now, but i promise you a chapter next time i am home.

i don't know my icq# off by heart, so i'll look it up when i get home. i don't use icq much really, since most of my friends are on MSN.

can't talk. just read.

CHAPTER 31

The empty corridors multiplied any fears I had. Even our quiet footfalls sounded deafening in the silence, and as for the metallic clicks of the sligs in our company…

Amazingly, given the deafening silence around us, we reached the outer door of the Slave Block without incident. Despite his initial reluctance, Gil led us purposefully and confidently down the grey corridors, only hesitating a couple of times at multiple junctions.

At the Outer Door, however, our luck ran out.

As the door swung open, we heard the ear-splitting whine of the security alarm. As we reeled from the alarm, Gil looked around in a panic, before grabbing my arm and pointing down a side-alley.

“This way! Quickly!”

There was no time to question him, so I followed. Seeing us move off, the rest of the slaves followed, panicking slightly. Vint caught up with Gil.

“Is this-” he breathed, “Is this the way to the city gates?”

“We can’t go directly, we’d be picked up in no time!”

“Okay.”

Gil led us down a series of alleys, and I thought for a while that we’d lost anyone who might have been following us, but then I heard gunfire and screams from behind us. There was a sudden rush forward, and we all hurried round the corners Gil led us round, trying to outrun the gunshots of the guards behind. The sound and smell of death was around us, although I didn’t look back to see the slaughter of those who had followed me.

Then Gil led us down the wrong alley. Before us was a line of guards, waiting. We were trapped between two companies of guards, but they didn’t seem at all interested in capturing us, as they opened fire immediately. Gil fell, blood pouring from gaping holes in his chest and head. Hap, holding on to my hand, went limp as bullets penetrated her skull. My earlier attempts to protect her were now apparently wasted.

I saw a door in the side of the alley, and pulled it open, running inside without waiting to see what was there. Confused, most of the other slaves followed. We found ourselves in a large warehouse. Hearing signs of pursuit, I led us in a twisted path through the huge crates, which weren’t dissimilar to the ones that had been on the ship. Screams from behind told me that our pursuers weren’t very far behind.

I looked for an exit, and saw one. We hurried out into yet another alleyway, and I wasted no time in picking a random direction to run in. Whether our chances of survival would have been higher if I’d picked a different route, I never found out, but we soon found ourselves under pursuit. We scattered.

Me, Vint, Quiss, Yan, and about a dozen others found ourselves being picked off one by one by three pursuing sligs. I watched impassively as the bodies of my fellow escapees fell to the ground, as my own survival assumed overriding importance.

Then Quiss fell. I watched in horror as my new brother’s chest exploded with blood, and he sank to the ground. I turned, and dropped down beside the body. I had lived without relatives for all my life, and no sooner had I finally found one, when he was torn from my grasp in this act of violence. The others slowed, wondering why I had stopped, but I cared not. My life was as good as over in this moment. Then I felt a familiar cold rush of hatred. How dare these sligs take away the life of my brother? They had never known him; he had never done them wrong; he had only been trying to escape. I was the one who deserved that bullet; I had organised the escape, and cajoled Gil into leading us out. Quiss deserved better.

I stood, and turned to face our pursuers, my mind already being pushed aside by an all too familiar usurper. I watched as I charged at the three sligs, unarmed. Even with their weapons, they hesitated in the face of such obvious aggression, but soon opened fire. In their uncertainty, most of their shots missed, but I was hit in the right arm twice. I barely felt it, and took no notice.

The first slig died the easiest, his neck broken in one swift move. Then, as though that hadn’t been bad enough, I swung his corpse over my head and threw it at the other two. It failed to knock them down, but threw them off balance long enough for me to leap on one of them, biting at his face while my hands wrenched his gun from his grasp. He cried out in agony as I tore off two of his feeding tentacles with my teeth, and fell to the floor, clutching at his face. The third slig was desperately trying to reload his rifle, having fired all his bullets at me while I was running. I used the other slig’s rifle to knock his head back, throwing him to the ground. I swung the rifle down, smashing his goggles, before dropping the rifle, and pulling his feeding tentacles in different directions. As the skin tore from his face, he screamed, temporarily deafening me. I hit him with his rifle to shut him up, smashing his skull and killing him. I strode back to the slig whose tentacles I had bitten off. He was still now, having lost a lot of blood, but just to be on the safe side I picked him up and broke his neck.

I wasted no time in returning to Quiss’s body, and kneeling beside it. I saw the horrified looks on the faces of the other slaves, but took no notice. I did my best to staunch the flow of blood from the hole in Quiss’s rapidly cooling corpse, pretending to myself that it would do some good. When I could feel no pulse I tried to restart his heart, and when that failed I collapsed over the body. Vint approached me tentatively.

“Ulven? Come on, let’s go.”

“Help me with Quiss.”

“Ulven, we don’t have time to mess around, we have to get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving him.” I clung to Quiss’s cold hand, as if to reinforce what I had said.

Vint sighed. “We can’t do any good for him.”

“If we leave him, he’ll die!” I was getting angry. Was Vint just a heartless bastard?

“He IS dead, Ulven!”

“NO!” Suddenly furious, I stood and punched Vint in one smooth motion, knocking him to the ground in a fit of rage. I stood, looking down at his shocked expression, and felt the last vestiges of the killer leave my mind, for the last time ever. I was as shocked as he was by my actions, and thought for a moment that he was going to hit me back. Instead, he stood, turned, and ran off down the alley. After a brief hesitation and a few glances my way, the other slaves followed him, leaving me alone with my brother’s corpse. I didn’t care. I collapsed across his chest, my tears mixing with his blood.

That was how the guards found me, half an hour later. They had some difficulty prising Quiss’s corpse from my grip, as my arms were frozen as if in death, and his blood had dried, cementing the bond that would always exist between us, undamaged by death and despair.

:eek: :eek: :eek: wow.... this is the best fic I've ever read! ( no joke ) BLOOD VIOLENCE usually tese would make a fic bad but no! this time it turned out for the better! YAAAAAAYYY!!!

thx rett.

thanx for the encouragement, BB! after this, there's only 3 more chapters to go...

CHAPTER 32

The Civic leaders charged me with rebellion. There was a small ‘Trial’, but since I had openly confessed before the interrogators had even started torturing me, and the ‘Jury’ was totally biased anyway, it was fairly pointless. I was sentenced to death, and my death was scheduled for the next morning. In the meantime, I was returned to the now empty communal cell, which had been my home for the past month, and promised a further interrogation later.

In near-darkness, I brooded over my life. Specifically, over the last three months, and the Madness that had gradually consumed me. The Killer had appeared for the first time, and had used me to kill twelve people, if you didn’t count the many who I had led to death in the revolt. It seemed like he had only taken control of me when it pleased him, but now I realised that he was there all of the time, that he was an integral part of me, of all of us. Really, he didn’t exist in the separate form in which I had always imagined him; my personification of the evil within me had just been an excuse, a justification. The truth was, I enjoyed killing. Not just killing for the sake of killing (except for one, the first, and the worst), but when I had to kill, I relished it. I revelled in it. I was no better than the slig who had tried to rape Hap: I gained pleasure from the suffering of others, even if they were ‘The Enemy’. None of them had really deserved death, and I had been fully aware of that. But I didn’t care. I could have knocked people unconscious, or merely broken their gun arms, but I had killed them, and enjoyed it. I felt unclean and better off dead.

“Deep Thoughts?”

I turned at the voice. It was very familiar, but in my state I couldn’t place it, especially in the darkness. A figure moved into the dim light cast by the window in the cell door.

“Yan? Is that you?”

The face smiled, humourlessly. “Did they torture you badly?”

“Where are the others?”

“Others?” Yan’s face screwed up in puzzlement. His voice was in a monotone, the emotionless drawl of those who know they are to die soon, and no longer care about anything.

“Where’s Vint?”

“Vint?” He seemed to be struggling to remember. “Oh yeah, he’s dead.”

“Dead?” I think I sounded surprised, although that was the answer I was really expecting.

“Well, he looked dead when they showed us his head.”

I paused, my head sinking onto my chest. “How did he die?”

“They tortured him to death. He refused to tell them who started the revolt.”

That did surprise me. That Vint would defend me with his life, even after the way I had treated him? My hollow confession seemed somehow ungrateful now.

“What about the others? What of Ulp and, err, Rixx?”

“They’re being tortured now. I expect they’re probably dead too now.”

“Olek?”

He looked at me. “Who?”

“The glukkon.”

“Oh, they shot him while we were running. Died painlessly, lucky bastard.”

“What about…” I dug for names. “Laur? And Snat?”

“Laur was the one with one eye, yeah? She was one of the few who made it to the gates.”

“She escaped?”

He shook his head. “No, they couldn’t open them, and they were all mown down by guards. I didn’t see Snat.”

I lay on the floor, dejectedly. So I’d killed them all. There were now over two hundred deaths on my conscience, as opposed to the twelve I had thought about before. And I had now accepted that I was totally responsible for my actions; I couldn’t blame any of them on any shadowy ‘Killer’ who took over my mind.

A strange clarity took me. My death seemed the easy way out, but it wouldn’t make anything better. How could I hope to redeem myself, and possibly repay society for what I had done, if I was dead? I realised that, in any case, I didn’t wish to die. I could reform; I had admitted my responsibility, which they always say is the first step. And there was so much that I could still do to redress the balance of good and evil in my soul. Only then could I rest. Vint had let himself die to try and protect me, and he wouldn’t have done that unless he saw something in me that needed to survive.

Yan was standing. “Looks like they’ve come to take us for more torture, before our execution. Get ready.”

Then I saw the full scale of the paradox I was trapped in: I couldn’t change my ways or make up for them if I was dead, but I was about to be executed, and I couldn’t escape unless I let what I had called ‘The Killer’ loose. The irony of this struck me, and I laughed with genuine mirth for the first time in a long while: in order to finally rid myself of my dark side, I would first have to use the full force of its power. I couldn’t kill the demon unless I unleashed it, unrestrained and unrepressed. I steeled myself for my final battle.

Good,Rettick! very good... like it alot! always have... YAY! fragments is great Rett. keep up the good work!
(grr... MSN isn't working for me...)

second to last post...

CHAPTER 33

The Magog Cartel has always been extremely good at punishments. The Glukkons have always treated the Vykkers’ latest devices with extreme relish. You could say they have a flare for it. A morbid talent. They even make their own improvements to the Vykker-designed torture racks on occasion, when the originals are judged to be not painful enough, or causing death too quickly. It was two such racks that me and Yan were now affixed to. There was a lot of activity around us, but I blocked it out as best I could, trying my hardest to release the part of me that could save us, even if it meant surrendering to the darkness within me.

My body went numb, as it usually did. Unlike usual, however, I did not launch straight into the attack. I listened to the seemingly far-away activity, and felt what was happening to me, and judged when the moment would come. This kind of cooperation between my rational conscious mind and the irrational killer that was the Other part of me was unheard-of, but could hardly be a bad thing.

I struck. A slig was strapping one of my arms down, while an intern was fitting the pain enhancers to my skull. I swung my arm, catching the slig across the face. At the same time, I pushed my head up fast, headbutting the intern off-balance, while I tore away the straps on my other limbs. As the slig raised his fist, I tore the pain enhancers from my head and, as I caught his fist, I applied them to his head, turning the gain up to full. I punched him lightly, and the immense pain fried his brain. Unfortunately, this drew the attention of the pair who were engaged with Yan, as well as the pair of guards at the door, who readied their weapons. The Glukkon supervisor squinted in our direction.

“What’s goin’ on?”

I threw a scalpel with the kind of pinpoint accuracy that would never have been possible when I was in my right mind, and it embedded in the glukkon’s eye socket, causing him to go down, his screams mixing with those of the slig.

Reaching down, I snatched up a length of strap that had been tying me down, and threw it around the intern’s neck. As it struggled to remove the choking material, I swung it over my head, impaling it on a large electrical skewer, whose purpose I can only guess at. As I pressed the green button on the machine, the intern’s skin began to melt and char, and its body withered into a dry husk.

I didn’t stop to watch this, for there was a hail of bullets from the doorguards. Swinging myself off my rack, I pushed it across the floor towards the door. The guards leapt out of the way, but the poor glukkon wasn’t so fortunate, and was buried beneath a heap of torture equipment, and the exchange bought me valuable time. I ran towards Yan’s bed. The slig and intern that had been working on him fled to the safety of behind mine, where the guards were now sheltering. Hurriedly, I untied the listless Yan and overturned his bed, to use as shelter from bullets.

My mind was racing, trying to think of the best way out of this. This hadn’t happened before; I usually operated purely on instinct at this point. I hoped it was a good sign, that I was learning to control my dark side, but it didn’t help me in my immediate situation.

My eyes fell on a rack of test tubes lying on the floor where they’d been flung. I recognised several toxic gases from when I’d worked for Zell. But I couldn’t use them, because then we’d be trapped in here, blocked from the doorway by the fumes. Then I noticed one tube that had a different label to the others. I racked my brains to think what it was, and then I remembered. Kristogen. Poisonous to sligs, but not mudokons. I wasn’t sure of its effect on interns, but it was our best bet on evening the odds. I threw it over the bed, towards our tormentors. For a moment, nothing happened, but then I saw wisps of bluish gas rising towards the ceiling, and the gunfire ceased. I cautiously stood.

I saw the three sligs curled into foetal positions on the floor, convulsing. The intern was crouched among them, seemingly trying to work out how to operate one of their rifles. I ran up to the intern, snatched the rifle from it, pointing it at him. My finger squeezed the trigger, but stopped. I motioned to it to stand.

“Do you understand me?”

I reined in my dark side, trying to box it away again, but it seemed reluctant to go away, even more than before. I didn’t consider it important. I knew how to control it now, and I didn’t need to bottle it up.

The intern nodded.

“Now, you’re going to lead us to the Flyer hangar, as if you were escorting us to be tortured. If you take us there, and do not give us away, I will let you live. Okay?”

The intern’s eyes narrowed, but it nodded.

“It’s alright, Yan, you can come out.”

Yan emerged from behind the bed. “What do we do now?”

In reply, I looked at the intern, and gestured to the doorway with my rifle.

“Lead on.”

well I have to say...........YAAAAYYY!
I think you should send this in to the fan fic section of oddworld.com! I haven't seen hardly anybody on icq lately and msn messenger isn't working right now! Grrr...

Rettick, when this is done, i want more fics. This is amazing. It's as good as "Only hyoomun", or whatever it was for word. Aah, now my bloodlust have been stilled. Damn, write more.

and so... it ends.

CHAPTER 34

The journey to the hangar was quite uneventful in comparison to everything else that had happened over the last few days. We needn’t have worried about the intern giving us away, as we didn’t run into anyone else on the way. One possible explanation for this was that the gas from the tube had spread into the corridors, killing sligs. I seemed to remember something about it not being too healthy for glukkons either.

I was true to my word. When we reached the hangar, I allowed the intern to run away, instead of killing it. Yan and I chose a flyer to escape in, and then I told Yan to get in and wait for me. I then looked for the largest cargo flyer I could find, and went inside. I went straight to the engine room, and opened the reactor. I set the rifle’s power pack to overload, then threw it inside and made my way back to Yan in the other flyer. We got out of there as fast as we could, pausing only to watch as the reactor exploded, taking half of the building with it. I watched impassively, desensitised to the violence after all this time. I didn’t delude myself into thinking that it would put Carthag out of action totally, but I hoped that, combined with the gas problem, it would slow them down, and at the very least piss them off. Satisfied, I turned my eyes to the windscreen ahead.

Yan wanted to return to Cyrcit. I decided that enough people had died following my ideas, so I asked him to drop me off at the Frontiers, saying that I wanted to find natives. We had quite a tearful parting, as we were each other’s only friends now, but our paths led different ways, and anyway, I told him I was bad luck to be around, which he could hardly disagree with.

After Yan flew off bound for Cyrcit, I turned my attention to the ‘Wildlands’, as I’d always been taught to refer to them. Armed with as many food rations as I could carry from the flyer, I set off in search of a people to call my own.

Two months later, three of your scouts found me, emaciated and hallucinating, and brought me here, and the rest, as they say, is History.

CHAPTER 35

And now I must leave you. I’m not sure where I’ll go, but I need to sort myself out. I’ve lived a lie here for three years now, and I had to tell you, but I didn’t dare to stay and see what you thought of it. Call it Cowardice, if you like. I do.

I will probably return some day. I have no idea when. It may be tomorrow, it may be years from now, but you will see me again. I just need to find myself, as they say. I need to rid myself of my dark side. I thought for a while that I’d left it behind at Carthag, but I’ve only been burying it, just like I did when I created The Killer to take the blame. When I have found what I’m looking for, I’ll return. My heart will always be here.

Farewell,

Ulven.

phew! it's finally over; i have finally finished and posted a fanfic.

in response to Silver's request for more fics, i think i shall turn my attention back to Undercover Operations. After all, it was my first fic. I have begun a third, 'Time and the Dance', but i'm reluctant to post it, as it draws heavily on Mai's fic 'Tides of Odd', so i want to wait until that's finished before i post mine. Melvin's reading what i've done so far now, and if he likes it, i may post it anyway.

wow... has it been this long?

Well, guess what folks, this is Mai, as you probably already guessed. Rettick? I have almost no time to talk, but I NEED to say. congratulations. completely and in full, that's beautiful man. I envy you.

and as for the story, I swear to continue on it more but with my workload increased, it might be a while before I get anywhere with ToOdd you know? but I will try. E mail me much beans... sad_mudokon@hotmail.com if you have the time. thankzz

yay! the first finished fanfic! It's beautiful man! :D

i'm emailing you now, and it's taking a bloody long time, so you'd better read it and reply, or there will be trouble...