Guess what, sportfans?
I've finished the story:
I'll post a chapter a day all this week, except for Friday. The last chapter will be posted on Saturday, in celebration of my birthday.
Chatper 82
5:00
Okay, not time to panic. I might still be able to pull this off…
Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no way.
But … No. I’d come too far to just resign myself to death. If I were to die, I’d take as many with me as possible.
I switch back to my mudokon body. They already knew I was on the loose, and I could move faster as a mudokon than a glukkon at this point. I forced the door to the ball car open and lurched inside. I turned to the control panel. Still dark and unresponsive.
How to do this? I began to frantically look around the inside of the car for some kind of switch or lever … no, more likely a switch. Glukkons had to operate this, too, from time to time.
And … so small and unobtrusive that one would only find it if they were looking hard, there was a small red button lined with yellow and black stripes low down on the wall.
Emergency Only! was the label.
I grinned and pressed it. A siren began to blare, clashing terribly with the already constant alarm floating through the air. But, the control panel lit up.
I quickly mashed the Zulag 9 symbol - a drawing of glukkons chatting at a table - and the ball car chugged miraculously to life.
I began to stretch and shake. Almost time. If I was right, the entire board of directors would be inside the main office, likely discussing what to do about me. So I would leap out and unleash shrykull before any of them knew it was coming.
A brief
[VISION]
there is a slig at a control board. he is playing with different buttons. at last he looks up at the glukkon, icarus, standing over him.
“i can’t override the emergency controls,” the slig moans. “we can’t stop him!”
icarus and vladimir begin to panic.
“i’m getting my ass to my office where it’s safe!” icarus proclaimed. and he turned to do so.
vladimir, meanwhile, looked contemplative: his cigar was shifting from one side of his mouth to the other.
“hey! come here!” he barks at the slig at the panel. they move off to a well concealed teleporter, shaped like a glukkon. they stand in the opening, and vladimir shouts “do it!” at, presumably, the machine. he and the slig disappear in a flash.
[/VISION]
vision came to me, and I knew, at least, that Vladimir and Icarus would not be present.
---
1:00
The ball car reached Zulag nine, and the door slammed open just as the timer mounted inside the car struck the one-minute-mark.
And a new alarm began to ring. It was nearly deafening, and it was accompanied by a flashing red light that bathed the entire room.
Move! I ran out of the ball car and down the short hallway to the next door. I knocked it in and sprawled into the boardroom.
I had a queer sense of
déj* vu that almost distracted me enough to get me killed. It was too much like the first time I had busted into Zulag Nine. The main room, the Boardroom, had five doors ringing the far walls, all possibly leading to glukkon suites and offices (one, I knew, led to a bathroom).
And there were nearly twenty glukkons in here. They were initially surprised by my sudden burst into the room, but soon had collected themselves enough to begin shouting.
“Kill ‘em!”
“Get ‘im!”
“Get outta here!”
“Help!”
“Do it!”
Sligs were already pouring into the room. Let them come.
I clapped my hands together and felt shrykull erupt out of me.
