Chapter 5: The Rising
As the hybrids were walking back to camp, Bron walked away from the other hybrids for a moment. He saw a Scrab body lying close by. The other hybrids hadn’t noticed. He approached the body with an outstretched hand, suddenly the body began moving. “Argh!”, Bron quickly fell back and was frantically moving in the opposite direction. The other hybrids turned around to look, Riley went to stand next to him, “Are you alright?”. Riley than turned around and saw a very unsettling thing. The Scrab which had formerly been dead was now standing up and moving slowly towards Bron. “What the heck is that thing?”. While Scrabs don’t normally have eyes, there were two red orbs near the Scrab’s head which gave that impression. Around the Scrab’s neck was a golden halo. Bron was more scared than ever, “Get… Get away from me!”. The Scrab continued to advance. Bron stood up, held out a hand, “Stop! Don’t get any closer”. The Scrab halted its position. Riley was confused, “What the heck is it doing?”.
The Scrab entered a bowing position. As the other hybrids approached, Hemm chuckled, “It looks like you’re the master of it now”. Bron stood up, “What? You’re kidding right?! What if it tries to kill me?!”. The Scrab remained motionless. Tulia shook her head, “If it wanted to kill you, why did it not run towards you? Or ignore your commands? Didn’t you see the way it responded to your voice? You’re in control of it somehow!”. Bron gulped, the Scrab remained motionless. “I command you to… er…”. Bron tried to think of what he wanted it to do. “Go and bring me the body of… A Sea Rex”. Riley laughed, “You’re kidding right? How can a Scrab kill a Sea Rex? Those things are massive”. Bron smiled, “That’s the whole point, now that thing won’t come back to bother me”. The Scrab walked away slowly, possibly never to return.
The hybrids met up back at camp, Inna started a conversation. “So, you can bring back creatures to life… and then control them?”. Bron nodded, “It sure seems that way, it only works on creatures with their brains still intact though… So this lump of meat…”, he waved his food, “…won’t come back to life”. Lorn sighed, “This is getting troublesome, these ‘powers’ we have may turn out to be our undoing”. Silpher put his hand on Lorn’s shoulder, “Come now Lorn, let’s stay positive here. We have these gifts for a reason”. It looked like Lorn was about to knock Silpher's hand away, but then he stopped. Lorn sighed, "I suppose you're right". Lorn walked away slowly. Silpher was worried, he'd never seen Lorn so angry before. This whole situation was obviously getting to him.
That night, Lorn and a few other hybrids travelled back to where the destroyed labs were. They found what they were looking for. Lorn picked up a half-buried object in the ground. It was a box which was covered with a black plastic covering. Hemm nudged Lorn, "Is that... a Black Box?". Lorn nodded, "Yeah, this should give us all the information we need".
= * = * =
Finally the pack are going to get some answers. But will it all be good news?
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