Chapter 75
50:00
Now in my bigbro body, I moved on through the zulag. I soon reached a largish room with five identical machines in it. Torture devices.
Each machine had a wide, bowl-shaped base, and three rods with rounded blue tips around the edges of the bowls. Over each bowl was a mudokon, suspended upside down. The rods on the base sent little bolts of electricity directly into their faces. The tears would drop into the bowls below.
The only other things in the room were the computer terminal where the slig operated these devices - looking very bored, I noted - and a door against the far wall.
Easy. I walked over to the slig, who looked up. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What?”
“Go take a break. I’ll take over in here for a while.”
The slig yawned. “Sure. You work this console before?”
I had no intention of using it. “No shit, Sherlock. Just go have a smoke or something.”
He shrugged and moved towards the door in back. He went through and I caught a glimpse of a smoky room full of sligs, talking and playing pool.
The break room.
I gave the slig a thirty second head start, then followed him into the break room, Blitzpacker raised.
Now that I was inside, I had time to see five more mudokons, each walking around and serving mugs of koffee. Didn’t want them to get caught in the crossfire.
“Look out!”
The mudokons dropped their trays and fell into crouches, then lowered their heads and covered them with their arms.
The sligs, meanwhile, didn’t know what to make of me barging in and shouting. Several were standing and grabbing guns, but not enough.
I unloaded with the Blitzpacker.
YOW! What power! I tore through the room, cutting down the sligs, and being careful not to aim too low.
I dropped the Blitzpacker and switched back to my mudokon body. After climbing down off of the large BigBro Pants, I began chanting. The mudokons all stood, and, cheering, they came running and jumping through the bird portal.
Time to go get the mudokons out of those torture devices. I went back to the last room and inspected the control panel. After trying a few buttons - and accidentally shocking a few mudokons - I decided that I would have better luck trying a verbal override.
Which meant … Druna.
I made it as quick as possible, as speaking to her was getting more and more awkward. She gave me the morph, and I made the change.
As Avid, I spoke at the console. “Hey!”
After a second … “Hey! What?”
“Turn off the torture devices! Do it!”
“Bleh!”
And it was done. The clasps on the mudokon’s ankles came loose, dropping them onto the floors.
I transformed again and had time to notice how exhausted I was. So many transformations so fast… I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep it up.
The mudokons were all angry. They began to beat each other up pretty fast, as though it was each other’s fault.
I growled. Not cool. “Stop it!”
They all spun at me, and decided they were being foolish. It didn’t change the fact that they were pissed.
“Look, sorry, but what the hell? I was trying to get you out!”
I realized they didn’t understand me, so I repeated myself in whistle speak.
They all looked ashamed, then apologized. With everyone calmed down, I chanted yet again, and sent these guys home.
Almost done with this zulag. Five more mudokons were around in here somewhere …
The only part of the zulag I hadn’t checked was …
Ha. The boiler room.
