This will be the last chapter for a few days. I'll be out of town and away from my computer. Note: If anybody lives in or around Newark, Delaware and is planning on going to the football game at Glasgow High ... I'll be around. My marching band is playing there.
Anyhow, chapter time.
Chapter 74
00:57
Fifty seven minutes.
Time for a plan…. Something came to me, and I was desperate. Three minutes was longer than I wanted to stay in this car. So I bent forward again and pressed my face against the screen with the glukkon’s face repeating the message about meeting in zulag nine.
The screen went blank for a moment, and I was connected to a slig wearing a headset. He sat in a control room, presumably in Zulag Nine.
“Hey!”
“Hi.”
“I’m stuck in a ball car that got shut off for the announcement. I was on my way to Zulag Ten. Turn on my ball car! Do it!”
“Yessir! But I suggest being quick. Everyone needs to be here in less than an hour.”
Then he pressed a few buttons … and I heard an engine start up somewhere above me. The ball car was moving again.
Good.
00:55
This flashing sign greeted me as I stepped off of the ball car and into the detention center. This sight was quickly followed by a large group of sligs beating on a small group of mudokons. I saw mudokons stuffed into pens. I saw cages hanging from the high ceiling that no doubt held mudokons.
Infuriating.
I cleared my throat and shouted. “All o’ yeh!”
Every slig in the room turned to me. “HI!”
“Come ‘ere.”
The sligs came to me and gathered around, buzzing anxiously.
“You are all no doubt aware of the presence of a mudokon renegade in the complex. I want you all to split into groups and report to slig training, food prep, and food storage and try to flush him out. If we can find him, we won’t have to poison and kill the other workers, and we’ll save some moolah.”
A wild goose chase. There weren’t any mudokons left out there, and
I was the “terrorist” they were after.
The sligs all agreed, naturally - they knew what happened when you argued with a glukkon in the presence of other sligs - and marched into the ball car.
I had done this because I had no time to try and shred them all as a scrab or paramite….
Anyhow, I turned back to normal and looked up for Zippy cams. But … it seemed that in the power outage, they had all been deactivated. More time saved for me.
I went and undid the bolts on the pens holding the mudokons. They were all very blue.
“Aww,” I whined, not wanting to tarry and doing so anyway. “Alloya!”
They all moaned greetings.
“Sorry … follow me?”
The muds brightened, though they retained a depressed manner. I noted with some despair that they were going gray around the edges.
No time to cheer them up. They’d find happiness in the new settlement.
I led them over to the group of angry, beaten mudokons on the floor. Couldn’t apologize to them, either. I just shouted to get their attention and began to chant.
Ten more rescues gave me another shrykull power …. I relished the feeling of power that rushed through me.
But no. I had to save this for when I absolutely positively needed it.
And it looked like I might not right away. There was a machine - it read “Getcha Bigbro Pants” - and I understood how I could do everything. At least, everything in the rest of this zulag.
I racked my brain to try and remember who held my Bigbro flash power… I had only used it once, in the desert, shortly after meeting …
Those ghosts.
{Clog?} I asked tentatively. I expected a hail of angry curses from him, and wasn’t disappointed.
When he was finished, I continued. {Clog, I need the Bigbro morph.}
He knew I wasn’t going to be affected by his cursing, so he gave in and powered me up.
I transformed and crawled over to the machine. I pressed the button with a beefy hand and felt a small shock course through me.
After a moment I realized that I was fully armored, pants, gun, and all. Closer inspection on the gun revealed that it was a Blitzpacker.
Okay. Now to clean up dodge.
