ARC OF THE IMMORTALS/ Book 1 — Part 2

Pursuit: 61/ Reckoning Pt-4

Recap: Two ancients observe the characters in The Well of Souls from the planet Ennis. Touzdae, Jac, & Sarz in exosuits. Touzdae’s Hivbrit takes her to Nez’s realm. An unseen force takes Jac to —

Recap continues: — the Escape Vehicle of the Nez Fish. He listens to Nez’s message in his head and hears her say she is dying. He wonders if he is dead, and asks the suit what is generating heat. Though the suit tells him it’s him — Jac. He believes he is a ghost. He goes to look to see if there is a body in the healing room. There is, but he believes his body is dead. Touzdae telepaths with Nez in her coffin.

Sarz confronts Bendel about leakage from the Dark Ray Machine. Bendel says that’s impossible. She pops into the healing chamber and sees it coming together. Jac’s heart beats occasionally one beat. Meanwhile, Touzdae wonders where the poison that is killing Nez comes from.

Jac confronts Bendel who shoots at him and misses. The shots create holes in the fuselage and the air bleeds out slowly at first. Jac advances as Bendel retreats. Jac uses X-ray tech to see black roots growing out of the Dark Ray Machine going forward under the deck. He sees the roots growing in Nez’s brain. Baz and Bendel are awaiting him on the other side of the airlock door with laz canons. Jac decides to go outside the ship to go forward.

Recap concludes and now…

Jac went aft. Touzdae appeared as the door shut to the forward passageway.

“Oh my Spirits, it’s you, Jac, you’re alive!” she threw her arms around his shoulders and her helmet morphed into the lower part of her suit. He stepped back awkwardly. “I may be a ghost,” he said through the external speaker. “My body is in the destroyed healing center.”

“Let’s go there. I’ll transport us there.”

“Wait, I need to tell you about what just happened with Bendel,” Jac said through the suit’s speaker.

“Come sit,” Touzdae encouraged with a soft gentleness. They sat together. “I know we each have information to share.”

“That’s right. You go first,” Jac said to her.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve come from visiting Nez in her world. She told me she had been poisoned and was dying. But you know this already.”

“Yes,” Jac said holding back tears. He explained the black roots that the Dark Ray Machine had sent out, and how it had taken over her neural hub.

“I am so sorry,” Touzdae started. “Hold me, we need to jump, they’re coming.”

Jac put his arms around Touzdae as her helmet assembled around her head and sealed as they bilocated. Time slowed to a near stop for both of them…

I hear birds from Antarian Prime, Jac thoughts floated through Touzdae’s consciousness. I hear them too, Touzdae shared. Trees appeared; forests, clouds, and worlds.

Time began moving again. Together they popped into the crippled healing disk.

There is a pure oxygen bubble around your body at the center, Touzdae telepathed thoughts to Jac. Yes, Jac acknowledged.

Baz and Bendel, with re-breather units and makeshift vacuum suits, fired laz canons at the locked doors of the Escape Craft. Jac wasn’t there. Both of them searched for signs of him.

“Harry, Bendel here, acknowledge!” Bendel barked into his communicator.

“Harry here.”

“Have you found Jac?”

“There are four life signs in what used to be the healing disk. They are intermittent.”

“Jac and who else?”

“There’s too much interference for me to determine if it is Jac. The equipment is dropping out and then kicking back in. Diagnostics affected too. The Half-Life Chamber has intermittent power. I can’t understand — ” Harry’s voice cut out.

“Baz, get to the bridge and help Harry. I’ll go to Luna.”

As Jac and Touzdae approached his body at the center of the disk-shaped chamber, Sarz spoke. She was in the booth. It was the only structure intact after the chamber had been ripped apart.

“Stop, you two — Touzdae and Jac. Don’t touch him. Don’t move him. The oxygen bubble will burst and his body with die if you get any closer. He is three-quarters healed.”

They stopped and turned towards her.

“You wonder why I do this after I tortured you Jac. Is that right?”

The resounding “Yes” forced her backward in the booth.

“A man named Tu Mai appeared to me and showed me the shambles of my life,” she began to sob and stopped talking.

Bendel rushed into the darkened and drained pool of life. He climbed up into the half-life chamber. He found the instruments destroyed by a black slime. Black roots had invaded the chamber. Luna’s body looked strange and lifeless. Her body became sheaves of paper. When Bendel reached out to touch her, the dried parts puffed into clouds of dust. The black roots had sucked up the water and killed the light.

Bendel infuriated with blind rage — he wanted to kill them all. Most of all he wanted to obliterate Jac and the traitor Sarz.

“I knew that after all I’d seen and felt I needed to make amends to you Jac. And that includes you, Touzdae. Besides our exosuits, all other exosuits I sabotaged. I used all my powers to invoke Arturo to manifest here and help me reconstruct this chamber to heal you Jac. This is what I have been doing. And misdirecting Bendel too. I am trusting that my efforts are not in vain.”

The chamber shuttered and lurched.

“It’s the roots,” Touzdae said alarmed, “They are separating this ah — chamber from the rest of the ship. Since they haven’t been able to break in — we and the chamber are useless.”

The chamber jettisoned from the rest of the ship and began a slow descent toward the Well.

This chapter and the one that follows are the last ones of this book.

If you want to catch-up on any chapters you missed in part 2 [Part 2 contains link for contents of part 1 for reading with continuity]:

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Thank you for joining me in the adventures that span lifetimes and worlds. Blessings on your journeys and odysseys. (If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):

Alison Hollingsead | K. Pearson Bradley| Dougfrombk | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Dr. Preeti Singh | Ravyne Hawke | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | Lee David Tyrrell | DL Nemeril | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Libby Shively McAvoy |