How far would you go?

[Nulion]

((Alright, as a preface to this, my third story...I wanted to mention something. The event that happens toward the end of this story is, I know, a fiction - an alien attack in Rome has not happened in months, and I know it....but I HAD to write this anyway There was a recent alien attack in Old Athen, so pretend all of this happened the same day as that alien attack; around mid February. Oh, and if ya like it, pleease comment The Nuli loves comments, makes me happy, hehe. Anyway, please enjoy the story ))



I was resting....having drifted off to sleep....Lying on the mattress, the brilliant suns that illuminated this world setting below a horizon that, from this altitude, was formed entirely of clouds....Clouds tinted with that omnipresent notum dust that formed the cornerstone of life on Rubi-Ka.

My days had settled...my world was clear. My nights...weren't as lucky. My dreams constantly kept me in doubt as to what I would be when I opened my eyes, greeting the brilliant vistas of Jobe not as rational Opifex, but as a creature of diseased and warped science....but fortunately, each and every day I wake up to that familiar pale grey complexion, characteristic of my people.

But tonight....my dream was different. Dreams are by their very definition, the tossing and turning of an unsound mind, a mind lost in a place where it has never been, and never will be. But to some, dreams are the representation of the future...of the past....of different possibilities, of different regrets and accomplishments. A mishmash of the human condition, all at the mercy of REM slumber. Things you see, things you do, things you know, things you never knew, things you wish you never knew....And sometimes, things that don't feel right, or feel out of place. And earlier that day, while buying several new frames for photographs for the Council of Truth offices....I got that feeling.

Something was missing. But what was it? What could I have forgotten in my time here...? Over the past few months, it seems like there is nothing I can't remember. And remembering hurts. But this was something I'd overlooked....something small. Something that needed to go into one of those frames. A photograph.

A piece from my past....A piece of something that I knew was still out there. And that night, I could see it....lying alone on a cold, metallic floor...matted in dust, in a corner of a city where nobody would ever expect to find it. Where nobody would look...

Rome.

I had memories of that city...the most beautiful part of Omni-Tek, clean and orderly. The streets paved with what seemed at first glance like a type of rough marble. Neat and orderly trees, like green feathers, poked along the city's streets, softly illuminated by the glow of the city's streetlamps. The skies above Rome were blue....beautiful and pure. You would never think a city like Rome would hold the things it does....the worst parts of Omni-Tek.

Omni-Med, at first glance a bastion of medical expertise and healing....Their offices are in Rome, but its good intentions begin to pale as you look inward, at the monstrosities it has generated as an entity. Biomare, formerly an Omni-Med laboratory, has generated still-untold horrors...Including the one that raped my eyes and my dreams. There's a lot more to them though, than just Biomare. And honestly I do not know how deep the rabbit hole goes with them; maybe this is one of those cases where ignorance is bliss.

And then there's Omni-Reform, occupying the other half of Rome. The propaganda machine, the part of Omni-Tek that convinces you that a corporation can, indeed, be your friend. They are the ones responsible for the faintly glowing messages etched into the city's walls...floating above the streets, telling you, reassuring you, that you are looked out for. And in all honesty, you are; security within Omni-Tek is top notch, and as long as you play by the rules you will be alright. But the real reason Omni-Reform is such a stain comes from what they do when you try to play by your own rules...And I've seen the results.

The two demons of Omni-Tek...all in one place. And I knew it's where I had to go. Seeing that photograph in my sleep, the one I knew had to be in my office when I was to get it finished...was like a splinter in my mind. I couldn't get rid of the thought...that nagging, demanding thought.

[Nulion]

It takes a strong dream, a strong image....to begin with you one night, and stay with you through that lapse of consciousness all the way until the sunrise. Most dreams get lost in the annals of your mind through the night, your mind forgetting its troubles and losing itself to the biological need to recharge itself. And by morning you know you had a thought, you know you had an experience without actually living it....but you can't remember what it was. But by the time the suns swung the tiniest bit above the clouds that were my horizon, I could still see it in my mind.

My daily routine wasn't much to speak of....bringing a few pieces of bread, several slices of bacon, a bit of jelly, and some butter from the fridge and breadbox. Back home I had eaten the same thing day in, day out...the salty taste of bacon bringing me back to those days, those wonderful days, when my world was nothing but what I could pick out with my senses...what I could see, touch, taste, and hear. I'd visited a farm back home...back on Earth. One of the few remaining, run by those types that appreciates the simpler things in life. And my friend had shown me how good a piece of toast, spread with butter and dabbed with jelly could taste.

I could think of nothing more I'd want for breakfast....jelly and butter toast...bacon...and warm memories of home to go with it all.

And of course, the obligatory glass of orange juice; which honestly just wasn't the same as it was back home. You don't exactly see any orange trees growing around Rubi-Ka, do you?

While the bacon grease sizzles and the toaster does its work with the bread, I would always take my shower. And each and every day it always brought a smile to my face, while bathing, to think just how dirty a clanner I was. All those employees sticking with their preconception that Clansmen are dirty, smelling of foetor and dust. Even if it was only in the corner of my mind, I had a little kick out of proving them wrong.

Technology in my apartment is really at a low...I don't keep a cleanerbot or an automated window washer, or any of those kinds of amenities; but there is a nice little machine that has nothing better to do during my day, than to take the bacon off the frying pan for me, and dry the grease off. Another fine product from RUR Robotics for sure! But I like to do things myself...not to have some machine to look after....and I'd had enough of looking after machines that did nothing but break.

Breakfast, as meager as mine usually is, never takes long to eat. And after breakfast comes getting dressed and ready for the day ahead of me...I always used the same clothing, too. I get a lot of people telling me I should wear something else....maybe some of the other clothing I have in the closet. But why dress in what you aren't comfortable wearing? Why use stiff fabrics when you could don well-worn, snug-fitting armor? Especially on a planet like Rubi-Ka...Before coming here, I'd never worn even a lick of armor; not one piece. Your views on things change after the first time you've been shot at...Some people before long get used to the sound of bullets whizzing by, of creatures rushing at you with every intent of leaving you in a shallow grave. I never did get used to it....I never could. That's why I so seldomly take my armor off...And it's why I use rifles.

Through the scope of a rifle, you are a god...looking down at everything, while everything passes you by, unknowingly....As long as they never see you, and as long as your arms are steady...you may as well be standing beside them with a pistol to the head. One shot, and it's all over with. Only when spotted, do you have anything to be afraid of.

I should have been afraid right now though....I should have a voice in the corner of my mind, screaming not to go through with it. Not to carry on, to just stay home or go back to working on cleaning those offices. But I couldn't...there was still that splinter, that nagging. That photo....I knew it was important. Important enough to go all the way there, maybe important enough to risk my life. But then on a planet like this....what did death matter anyway?

I stepped out into the long, winding hallway that connected my apartment to the world above...an intricately-woven cavern hewn through rock and soil that spiraled upward through the underbelly of the floating landmass that was Jobe. But I didn't have time for exploring the rest of it all....Just down the hall, adorned with two beautiful blue lights that hung in the air with defiance to gravity, was an elevator. I'd used it many times before of course, the silent glass plate detecting a passenger at the B-7 floor, drifting downward to land in front of me, two flawless glass doors sliding open and inviting me inside.

It didn't take long to get to the top floor, and right out the front door without much time for hesitation. Stepping out into the Jobean sky was refreshing as always, a gust of cool wind whipping past, a wisp of my hair caught in it, fluttering to the side along with the armor manteau I kept wrapped around my shoulders, usually draped down past my waist. Today was one of those good days...I think.

Down at the bottom of the Jobean archepelago, the Platform, were three whom-pahs I was able to use. It didn't take long to get there, but almost by impulse I approached the Rome Green whom-pah. But...that was wrong. Wasn't it? That IS where I wanted to be...but there's no way I could just waltz in there through the whom-pah. I'd have to go another way. But how? Aerial was out...the street was definitely out. But from underneath...? A smile spread across my face, knowing exactly what I'd be doing. I stepped into the blue, cold light of the Old Athen whom-pah, feeling my body wear away into nothing more than data. And I was gone.

[Nulion]

Old Athen....The city is more beautiful, more lush than it has ever been. The skies blue and pure, suns boring down on what now can only be described as a fusion of garden and cityscape. And to think only a scant year ago, this place was a pit of decay and broken memories. Memories that absolutely nobody on this planet shared, the war that had ravaged it all having taken place over 260 years ago. Well, maybe there WAS somebody who came close....but she was no clansman. Stepping along the newly rebuilt streets of Old Athen, removing a Yalmaha cube from inside my knapsack, I thought of what Humbold had told us at the most recent Council session...We'd had a talk with him, and an interesting one at that.

He mentioned Rita Prestin, that frigid demon in disguise of a young woman who controlled Omni-Med. If ever there was a reason to despise a place of healing, she was that reason....But the woman herself defied logic; human beings were never meant to live as long as she has. If Humbold was right, that woman has lived well over two hundred years...having been the head of Omni-Med for that entire time. As I told him, being at the top of an entity like Omni-Med must get you access to some amazing, and questionable, technology.

Speaking of amazing technology...it never ceased to amaze me, watching a full-size Yalmaha decompress from the space compression-cube that was small enough to fit in one's pocket. A full machine, capable of taking one anywhere they'd like to go on this planet...that fits in your hand. In no time at all, the Yalmaha, a newer Sunset model, hovered in midair before me, a hatch on the side opening. I got into position in the cockpit, displays and images flickering to life in front of me...a global map of Rubi-Ka at all times projected against the upper left corner of the windshield. And all I needed to do was press my finger to the map...and the craft whisked away, into the sky...to Rome.

[Nulion]

The world peeled into view....the suns cresting over the horizon, spreading irradiated light over the desert world. Light that, when passed through the windshield of a Yalmaha, tinted the cockpit in a hazy blue. The blue though, was disrupted by the occasional flashing of red lights as the craft passed over anything it detected as a hostile...and this world was so full of hostiles. Creatures and beings that, at the mere sight of a clansman this far below the border, would never hesitate to puncture a hole into the fuselage and send me crashing to the ground below. But I ignored them, instead focusing on the spires that rose along the horizon, their presence casting huge, long shadows over the ground.

I didn't want to go right there though...A few hundred yards outside the city walls, there was a nice spot I remembered from my days working with Omni-Trans. Outside of the city of Rome, plateaus with steep cliffs surrounded the walls...along the road that led through the middle was an outpost, complete with guard tower and beer vendor for when the guards got bored. But across the street and up a hill was an area that's often overlooked, thankfully...It was a burrow in the ground, a natural cave formation, dirty and reeking of whatever lived inside, at one time or at present. I remembered, from all that time accompanying those little droids down into places like this, that this cave emptied out into the subway system that ran beneath Rome. It was an abandoned system of course, desolate and home to who knows what. Never finished...just an enormous network of tunnels that led nowhere...

I hopped from the Yalmaha, the craft tilting to the side as my weight pushed it down. Detecting no pilot inside, the Yalmaha automatically went into storage, compressing and cramming itself down into the size of a pack of playing cards...a metal case complete with biometric scanner, that'd keep anybody from opening it back up but me. I slipped the tiny thing into my knapsack, snug alongside the chess pawn that I hoped would bring me luck down there...Taking my rifle from around my back, the strap hanging loose down my arms, I stepped into the damp, dark embraces of the cavern.

Natural light can only pierce the soil so far...even if a gash had been torn open to allow it in. Light is limited, it flows and blooms out to fill a room...but only one room. The rest of the cavern was as dark as I'd expected it to be, the place smelling of dampness and dirt, mud and moss. Thankfully, I had kept a light mounted to the inside of the rifle scope. One press of the button, and I could follow the cave safely, probing deeper and deeper into the Omni-Tek soil.

A trail of roots and moss, flourishing along the footpath of this place, led ever downward....pieces of metal beginning to show through the walls around me, the tunnel fading from the natural to the synthetic. There was a light off in the distance...Faint, but definitely there. The air around me grew colder and damper...the walls around me crumbling ever so slowly, small clumps of mud rolling down the tunnel, sullied only by my footsteps.

The closer I got, the deeper I went, the more I could hear....Unnatural sounds, things only a flawed human hand could have anything to do with the creation of. They were down there though...And I knew through experience that the creatures inside these tunnels weren't exactly friendly...I can remember escorting those cleanerbots down here...Remembering the sound and the smell of their mounted machine rifles charging up to dispose of some mutant that caused some kind of disruption. My gun wasn't far behind, making sure what we put down stayed put. I...wasn't very necessary, and my pay during the time reflected it. I could hardly even afford a good meal back then...They weren't the best of times for certain.

Continuing along the earthen tunnel, I could definitely pick out where natural formation ended and where the centuries-old subway network began. I could hear the water from the tunnel dripping steadily onto the dirt-encrusted metal that made up the subway beneath me. And then I slipped on it; the slickest possible patch of dirt, tearing it from beneath my boot, showing that beneath all of this there was only metal. Not that I noticed; I slammed onto my back, arms flailing, sliding toward the light as fast as gravity would allow for, rocketing out of a hole in the ceiling of the subway tube, collapsing in a heap on the cold-tiled floor!

Pain was the first thing on my mind...It's always the first thing on your mind, whenever it's there at all. My body ached, staring up at the dripping hole in what was now the ceiling to me. A flickering light to my right provided all the light I felt I was ever going to see...A dull throbbing pulsed in my head as I picked myself up from the shallow pool of dirty water I'd fallen into, carefully scanning everything around me....the tunnel looking so modern, and yet so decrepit at the same time. The tube I was in stretched off into the distance, shadows of creatures never meant to exist drawn up against the dimly-lit walls, lined with cracking mortar and tile.

Did I want to get involved with them...? I could hear their growling, their mumbling...senseless slatherings of saliva and voice that made no sense to a human ear, and even less sense when heard echoing down a dank tomb like this one. But the echoes....Even the smallest sound made an echo, from the pattering of their warped and twisted feet on the wet tile to the scurrying of small feet, of rollerrats and of anything else down here that called this place home.

Some people would have charged headlong into the fight...sword, axe or hammer swinging, putting a swift and painful end to such miserable lives...The one who comes to mind immediately is that Hyperion...An enforcer, and really not a half-bad one at that. Headstrong, throwing himself and his heart into everything in front of him...sometimes with results you wouldn't call optimal. Nevertheless, he's a good man....and a great ally. But I'm not like him...I can't rush into the thick of things, screaming and swinging an axe. Truth be told, I was afraid of things like that....I would rather stay out of sight...out of mind....at least until my bullet rockets through theirs.

I had no reason to be so bruske and headstrong, not with the type of equipment I took advantage of. Whatever it took to remain unseen, really. Chief among those instruments was the new-generation Lightbender I'd bought, and had modified professionally to ensure that this time, it didn't break or fail me. I....didn't want that to happen again. Not this time. What the machine is supposed to do, is to alter the physical color of and distance between the molecules on and in my body. When turned on, all you can see of me is a ghost...a near-invisible spectre that can slip in and out of almost anywhere. The downside to it, is that with inanimate objects like my rifle...it literally pulls the microscopic pieces of the gun apart; and the gun cannot function. Not one piece of the gun touches another piece...How my gun cannot operate and yet my body can, I have no idea.

With the flick of a switch on my belt, my body faded away...Closing my eyes, I could still see; my eyelids transparent, forever vigilant. My boots didn't make a sound, trudging down the dark corridor...to anyone else, they might be able to see bootprints suddenly appear, spreading patterned water over the dirty tile. But nothing else.

A cool draft blew down from the dark recesses of the tube ahead of me, whistling past the side tunnels and the wreckage strewn about the floor...a sign, worn from time and the elements, swayed and dangled from its single chain, scraping and banging off the tile. In large, unlit letters were the words "ROME PLATFORM", followed by an arrow. Of course by now, the crooked and lopsided sign's arrow was pointing directly at the ground, but it didn't take much imagination to see where it used to point...

These tunnels, at one time, were probably Omni-Tek's proudest achievement...a massive system of silent, gliding trains that would speed from Omni-1, to Rome, to Omni-2 in mere minutes. Back when Old Athen was called Omni-2, that is....which was near 300 years ago. These tunnels were discontinued, abandoned and forgotten when whom-pah technology first came into being. Huge chunks of the subway were never finished, nothing more than a relic of the way things could have been. Pieces of the subway, pieces that had never been connected to the main subway tunnel grid, could even be found as far north as Tir. Large portions of tunnel had collapsed in places too, as evidenced by a side tunnel I could see down to my left, the ceiling utterly collapsed inward.

Stepping amongst the ruins, I could see those creatures in detail. They truly were some of the worst products of human science, their bodies making no biological sense...Hands warped into enormous eyes, heads reduced to nothing but stumps full of jagged, uneven fangs dripping with the blood of whatever it last mauled on. Some were hardly recognizable as human anymore...if that IS what they used to be, that is. Mutants as fargone as these had no memories...they lacked the ability to speak, to reason. Their minds were battered and destroyed by whatever cruelty dealt them, and all that remains is the devastated husk of the human's reptilian, instinctual brain. And even then, it doesn't act like an animal should act....Animals, whatever kind they are, do show fear. They may not even have muscles in their faces capable of showing you what they feel, what they think....but they still cower at the sight of someone or something they know is beyond their league. These creatures didn't follow any rational rules, they didn't care for or value life; including their own.

Even though it had no eyes, one of them whipped around, is movements riddled with pain and suggestive of a whole body that does not work in concert with itself....tentacles and limbs flailing in a slow, curious dance as somehow, without a nose, it could smell something nearby. It could smell my sweat...But before it was able to take even one step closer to me, a bullet snapped through the air, from the right, a steaming hole left through its "skull". Or whatever you would want to call it. The creature flew from its feet as if a rug had been pulled from beneath it, collapsing to the wet tile, spasming and seizuring its final death throes....before finally lying still.

"I got him guys! Ugly son of a bitch, too." It was an Omni-Tek employee, followed by three others, all clad in some sort of low-grade, dented and hand-me-down Omni-Pol armor. "Any loot man?" Another one of the men chimed up, giving the body a kick, watching it roll to the side, their flashlights glinting off of the beast's teeth. "No such luck...Ugh, where's the good stuff down here?" The one who shot that creature, his pistol still smoking from the barrel, just turned away. His flashlight pointed off into the darkness that I'd just come from, he waved the other men toward him. "Let's keep it up! No way we're gonna find Abmouth sitting around on our asses like this, c'mon!" And without another word, they all ran off into the dark...

That thing they'd mentioned though, Abmouth? It sounded familiar....I've heard stories of a kind of leader of the mutants down here...Horrible stories, really. But the name is always the first thing you hear about it; Abmouth. There was more to it, but I never thought I'd be down here. I did never pay much attention to urban legends, really. Maybe he was no legend though....At the very least, I knew I wouldn't be running into something like that, according to those employees. They didn't seem to be having much luck either. And speaking of them, they WOULD be back soon. After all, they'd only find a dead end in the direction they headed. Even though they couldn't see me, I still didn't want to be around when they returned...so I quickened my pace, hurrying along the darkened shaft, looking for what I came down here for.

[Nulion]

It took awhile, hurrying along the broken remnants of Omni-Trans' finest achievement, to find a cavernous room that could only have been the Rome Station. And it was a complete wreck...The dimly-lit room, filled with the odor of dust and mold, was adorned with tattered and shredded Omni-Tek banners, billboards that had ceased to work perhaps a hundred years earlier, and benches that were uprooted from their mounts on the floor. Pillars of cement, partially plated in a tarnished plasteel, were eroding away or crushed by some object long ago. Still others were smashed into unrecognizable bits by the huge, ghostly wreck of a subway train that had piled up onto itself, like some petrified snake caught in calamity.

Up above the wreck of the train, though, was exactly what I'd been looking for....a maintenance hatch, hung open lazily, stretching into a utility shaft directly above the platform. I approached the wreckage, crawling up onto the blasted and time-worn skeleton of the train, making my way up to the hatch as if this huge thing were merely a ladder. Tears in the roof of the train served as my rungs, and step by step I was face to face with where the second car had been shoved into the air, ground into the ceiling.

I jumped up as best as I could from the train to the maintenance shaft, thankful there actually WAS a ladder there to grab onto. It was a retractable ladder, rusted in place by the steady drip-dropping of water from inside the shaft itself...but fortunately it held together well enough for me to make it inside. And on the inside, it was darker than you could imagine...There was literally nothing ahead of me but the purest black possible, so much so that even my flashlight had trouble seeing further than maybe ten feet or so once I had turned it back on. But...all this time I had been using the flashlight, I hadn't been thinking very well. My eyes worked so differently now, no longer quite the eyes of a human being. Slowly, I reached up toward the light on the rifle scope...and flipped it off. The moment the lights went out the world around me altered. Color bled out of my vision, my surroundings coated in nothing but black and white. I could see so much more though...Instead of the flashlight offering me maybe a scant ten feet of colored metal, I could see maybe five times that....all in monochrome.

What....what had happened to my eyes? It's been months since the virus had taken its toll on my body, and I still had trouble getting used to the way it had changed my world. My mind, all this time, had been stuck in a sensibility I had lived with my entire life, that if I had wanted to see in the dark, I would need light. Light from a flashlight, light from NV goggles, light from a wall-mounted fixture. But...becoming something else changes all that. Even if you push it so far back in your mind that you never notice it, the changes are still there. An absence of light for me is the equivalent of turning all of the lights on. But then if I turn a light on, like the one I had on my scope, I see normally, as if nothing had ever happened to my eyes. I remembered now why I'd always kept the holovision on in my house at night...because synthetic light is what reminds me, at the most basic level, that I am human. If I turn the holovision off at night...I may as well be trying to fall asleep by daylight. It took me so long to get used to....and truth be told, I still haven't been able to fully deal with it.

When I had first contracted the virus, the altering of my DNA had...made for some imbalances. I hid it from people as if my life depended on it...There were times where, lying in my bed, I would see my vision warp gradually between what a human being sees, and what a mutant sees...And the mere thought of it sent me into an unnatural rage...I clearly remember destroying a radio in my room, hurling its pieces across the apartment with nothing more than my bare hands. I knew I was beginning to feel the same rage inside of me that I could see in the eyes of a mutant...so angry at the world, and at itself, that it had no outlet other than violence. It would drive the once-humans insane...their pain and their anguish was just too much for only one being to hold inside. They had to take it out on anything in sight, including humans. Now that I think about it, feeling the way I did at the time, it is amazing I didn't outright lunge at Dr. Duvall as she tried to diagnose my "illness"...I knew somewhere deep inside of me, I wanted to. I'm...just so sorry, doctor...The thought that at one point I had contemplated killing her just....tore me apart. And the worst part was that when I was feeling better, she showed interest in me. Not just as a patient with a remarkable condition, but as maybe a boyfriend...

I played it like I was just shy...Hiding my eyes and my feelings away from her, no longer feeling such pent up malice. But every time I looked at her, I remembered what I was feeling...On the days she would offer me chicken noodle soup to help my "cold", I would feel like running into the other room and strangling her...ripping her apart with claws I hadn't yet grown. But I never did...the soup was so good...and she was so kind...It held me in place. That, and the injections she would give me. Those injections are probably what most saved me from it all....Just remembering her name though, reminds me of the awful things I have felt around her...

But all of that is over now...I haven't heard from the good doctor in a long time it seems. All I have in front of me now is the monochrome, metallic hallway stretching forever off into a darkness that was so complete, even my new eyes couldn't see that far. I pressed onward...just wanting to get the memories of that horrible virus out from my mind.

The layers of a subway system aren't all that hard to figure out...The actual subway tube is sandwiched between layers of maintenance. A maintenance floor above you and below you, for keeping all parts of the artery working optimally without workers or droids obstructing the tunnel itself. The maintenance lines have to be big enough for either human or droid to slip inside. Above the upper maintenance line, as required usually by law, are maintenance access points. In case a part of the tunnel becomes inaccessible and cuts off another section, there are midway points used for repair or rescue. Right now, according to the signs scrawled all over the platform I had just climbed out of, I was at Rome Station. From what I remember, the subway train stopped in two parts of Rome...There was the Rome Blue platform, and the Rome Green platform. No trains went directly to Rome Red. If I knew what I was doing, and I'd hoped I did, a hatch allowing me into the maintenance access ladder for Rome Green was just ahead.

The shaft seemed to go on forever...Maybe with all my time spent out of this city, I'd forgotten how big it is; especially while traveling beneath it. A distance in enclosed spaces plays tricks on the mind...what is easy walking distance above ground, where you can see, is a nightmare to traverse where no light can reach. The darkness fools your mind into thinking that you are going to be there, following a path to nothingness, forever. And just when you think you've gone halfway across the planet, in the darkness so complete it mutes a flashlight, you see something. It wasn't light....but it was a piece of the ceiling of the shaft that just didn't fit in, a piece that disrupted the endless tube of metal. It was a hatch.

As much as I tend to think so at times, I'm not an idiot...Hatches beneath important Omni-Tek cities and facilities were monitored, although not very closely. Easy little pieces of machinery to fool really, but the answer is not so obvious...A small computer near the hinge of this hatch tracked its position, be it open, closed, or somewhere inbetween. I'm nowhere near as good at hacking as some of the people I've come to know in my time here, who could go so far as to manipulate the structure of the grid, but I knew at least rudimentary hacking. And I knew enough that I could fool a simple computer with false instructions....Taking out a small node from a kit I carried around with me, I set the node onto the framework of the computerized hatch...And all that little thing did, all it ever could do, is completely reverse a computer's logic. The same kind of device could be used for turning an enemy machine into a friendly machine, if you were able to get close enough. This computer wasn't designed to kill though, it was deigned to keep the door closed, and report if the door had been opened...But now, the computer's logic was that it had to stay open, and report if the door was closed. A smile stretched across my face as the deadbolt locks holding the latch firmly to the ceiling slipped out with a metallic clank, leaving the hatch to swing open, a torrent of fetid, stinking water rushing out from the newly-opened hole!

It must've had nowhere to go...having rolled down from street level, into what once was a dead end. Who knows how long it had been building up down here, in one of the cracks of the city. The shaft above me was perfectly vertical, an old ladder leading up for what looked like nearly forever...a small light at the top, some two hundred feet or so above. I was terrible at judging distances...but it was no understatement to say that I would be climbing for awhile.

[Nulion]

Often, I'm a victim of vertigo...being able to see the vastness of distance between solid ground and my feet sends a fear through me like nothing else. Claustrophobia is a close second on the list...But in here, in this endless ascent, there was no vertigo. Below me was nothing but black...and above me was light. The light spread over me, a kind of warmth I hadn't felt in what seemed like a long time. And the light, taking the shape of an Omni-Tek insignia as I inched closer and closer, washed away the feelings of claustrophobia I knew I had felt while down near the bottom of the shaft.

Brighter and brighter....higher and higher....The tunnel around me was lit up with the sunlight bleeding in through the insignia, and as I approached the end, I could see the sky...It wasn't blue though, as I remembered it being as I walked into that cave outside the city walls. The sky was restless....A storm brewing. What is it about stormclouds that evokes sadness in men? Why can something that is a product of nature affect the inner workings of the mind so effectively? And why can the same thing that evokes a sadness, a coldness inside some people...spark warmth in another?

A storm for me brings me back in time...back to the days where, in fascination, I would stare out the window at the clouds as they piled over one another, at the mercy of Earth's winds. It was a strange comfort, the very same kind that can send a chill up your spine in that comfortable kind of way...It's the same way a cool fan on a hot summer's day can tell your body to just relax. I remembered watching a storm at home...hearing the weather reports on the holovision, staring at the rain as it would fall all the way from the sky, only to land on a flower and gently caress its form...dripping off of a petal and gracefully into the dirt. I could see the same thing happen a hundred billionfold, spread out across my field of view. It captured my imagination, and set my mind at peace...I could just fall asleep, and have the most wonderful dreams, just by listening to the rain patter on the roof.

I....so badly missed those days.

Sitting there, my back against the other side of the shaft, hands and feet still tightly gripping the rungs of the ladder, I felt a drop of water fall from one of those small holes, and right onto my cheek...running down my face, a naturally artificial tear. It always begins that way...first one drop...then two drops...then a deluge. In no time, the rain was pouring through the manhole cover. I reached up with a hand, pushing the heavy steel plate up, just enough for my eyes to be at street level. It was back to the task at hand...and right about now would be the tricky part.

From my slit view on the world, I saw barely enough to know whether or not the surface was relatively safe. Rain pounded down upon the pavement relentlessly, picking up on speed and volume, everything within eyesight completely drenched by the water. Fortunately, even in this day and age, when mankind had conquered just about all there is to be conquered, we were still the same way about rain. Employees rushed about the street, seeking shelter indoors while the stoic guards stared onward. They seemed to feel nothing...the rain that pattered across their sleek, flawless armor merely trickled down their bodies, pooling beneath them. The ones who stood still looked as flush with the surroundings as the buildings themselves did, making them seem almost more like statues...

I had no idea what kind of training men like that went through. I'm no military man....My whole life I had actually done my best to avoid the service. Back home, I would oftentimes hear stories of people who had gone off to ICC Camp, and had gotten the opportunity to go to so many different worlds as Peacekeeper units. These men though....They were nothing like the ICC. The ICC, although often thought of as meddling, are really not a bad bunch of people. They want to keep the peace, they want to preserve order where otherwise there may be none. But those men there...Both the Omni-Pol Elite guards and those Unicorn patrollers, were utterly different. Just looking at them, you knew that many of them wished they did have something to shoot at, to kill just to make their jobs a little more interesting.

The Unicorns in particular though, were unlike anything else on this world...They simply didn't belong here...Sure, they may be the ones keeping the aliens from utterly swarming this planet and killing us all, and for that I am honestly grateful....But there's so much more to them than just that. They are the very best, the very highest-ranking military units within the entire structure of Omni-Tek...They are feared even within Omni-Tek itself, and here I am, on their opposing side. I suppose seeing a Unicorn on patrol is one of those sick, gut-wrenching reminders that I had gotten myself in so much deeper than I'd ever meant to. Fortunately, he would never see me.

By this time I had even forgotten, but my body was still under the effect of the lightbender. My body was still as clear as crystal, like a lithe sculpture of glass, able to move and contort of its own volition. To these men, there should be nothing in their company but air.

With a quick heave on my part, the manhole cover was off...without a sound. With tense and shaky hands though, I slid it back into place...not a noise. But just as I'd looked down to set the manhole cover into place, I noticed my hands....I shouldn't have been able to see them, but I did. And the only reason I could, was because the rain had stuck to an invisible surface...spattering and running in miniscule rivers down a crystalline body, refracting light off of itself. My hand didn't just look like it was covered in water...It looked like it was MADE of water. It was...really amazing, seeing myself in that way. As amazing as it was, it couldn't last forever...I couldn't stay where I was.

[Nulion]

Hurrying down the streets was no difficult task...Even basked in the rainwater, I was still for the most part invisible, and that counted for a lot when others were distracted with their own daily business. Businessmen held their briefcases over their heads as they made for the shops, waiting for the rainwater to die down. Others, maybe having gone out for a walk or having a good time shopping, scurried to their apartments before the rain could get them too wet. Nobody noticed an invisible man hurrying towards the apartment buildings.

It all worked out well for me though, which honestly is a nice change of pace. The building before me, labeled clearly as "Backyard Building 5", rose up from my feet into the sky. I do have fond memories of the building...Every night after my shift was over, I would drag my tired and depressed body up the elevators just inside the door. Not even the beautiful scenery of Rome could lift my spirits, as I knew I would have to spend yet another day of my life beneath it all.

Stepping into the building and out of the rain brought with it a rush of climate controlled air that I hadn't breathed in so long...At least not from any sort of Omni-Tek building. Try to think of what your typical office building would smell like; sort of Omni-Tek's official "scent" if you will. The building's lobby was standard fare really, just a large room, curved glass panes above me that stretched all the way down the walls, flanking the doorway just behind me. Statues of Phillip Ross adorned the spaces inbetween the panes of glass, spread along the floor. Holographic messages projected in front of the statues displayed all the usual Omni-Reform propaganda..."Omni-Tek is your friend!" was the most popular, of course. Along the rear of the lobby, toward the right, there was a room I remembered using almost on a daily basis during my time here; a vending room. They always did have this hoagie sandwich in one of the machines that I could never get sick of, which put a smile on my face. I might have to get one on my way out of here, actually.

Beside the vending room though, was a bank of four elevators. Ornate and crafted of a dark granite woven into glass plating, the elevators were ringed with lights that could be seen from outside, as the elevator slipped silently up into the glass tubes that were visible even from this room. Luckily for me, there wasn't a soul in this room...Doesn't mean there wasn't surveilance here, though. I could hear the soft whirring of a security camera as it continued its eternal vigil, moving from the right to the left...from the left to the right. But a camera couldn't follow what it couldn't see now, could it? The water on my body didn't stay there for long at all, my body once again as clear and crystalline as I'd have wanted it to be. Without hesitation, I stepped up toward one of the elevators, along a trail of muddy footprints, seeing out of the corner of my eye as the camera's lens trained directly in my direction...and then just continued to move as if it saw nothing. I could only smile, pressing the button to the left of the glass, stepping into the glass enclosure. I pressed a ghostly hand to the number 21 on the lightpanel inside the glass elevator, and promply acended silently toward the sky.

[Nulion]

Sliding up the glass tube, as always, was one of those breathtaking sights...The entire city of Rome bloomed into view and seemed to shrink and shrivel as I ascended higher and higher above ground level. I could see rainclouds in the distance and lightning lancing from cloud to soil...Yalmahas whisked through the sky, leaving behind vapor trails from the rain whisked from its surface, and notum transports hung in the sky like gigantic metal centipedes. Below me, people rushed to and fro...Some carried guns, some carried briefcases, some carried children. Some carried groceries, some carried nothing. It was everyday life in an enemy city...And looking down upon it, I knew that so many of them down there had never done anything wrong...So many of them had never harmed a person or another creature, and nor would they.

But as I climbed higher and higher, the people blurred from out of detail...I never went high enough though, so as to see nothing below me but an ant colony of specks. The elevator slowed down gently before that could happen...I looked around behind me, my eye catching the doors as they slid gracefully open, a second set of grey doors on the interior following suit. I stepped out, and into the brightly-lit hallway, eyes wandering around the whitish marble corridor. A stiff red carpet crunched softly as my glasslike boots made contact, leaving a wet footprint in the fabric that I could actually watch being formed. But seeing that print forced me to tense up...If my boots were still wet, then there'd be prints left in the lobby, in the elevator...

I'm always trying hard to calm myself down at times like these...I forced myself to remember that I had followed a muddy trail of footprints just to get where I am right now, and that the bottom glass of the elevator was also coated in the same layer of prints. There were so many, that you couldn't pick out one from the other. So if I couldn't pick out the other prints, then how would anybody be able to pick out mine? I smiled a bit to myself, stepping along the red carpet, my footprints wearing themselves out into nothing at all.

It had been years since I'd last walked through this hallway....Years since I had any right to be here, according to Omni-Tek law. But all of those years hadn't completely erased the memory etched into my brain from a year of routine...Down the hallway, work. Back up the hallway, sleep. Down the hallway, work. Back up the hallway, sleep. Routine burns itself into your mind, so that even as an old man you'd be able to remember the steps you took and the things you noticed along the way. I remembered a small chip missing from the rough marble along the corner I'd always take a turn down. I would remember a small spot in the carpet, from when a neighbor of mine had dropped a bottle of wine one night after an office party he had been to, and gotten drunk from. And most of all, I remembered a soft wear on the paint of the number "3" stuck to the small placard outside my door, room 2137.

Of course, no door in this building would just slide open for anybody, right? For all the years I had been living with the Clans, I'd kept mementos of my time working with the corporation. An old, dusty suit in my closet. A worn and slightly damaged merit award for service to the corporation. A set of shoulderpads awarded to me by a corporate man named Alvin. And last but not least, the key to my old apartment...I'd kept it on a small ring of keys with me, along with the apartment keys for my place in Jobe and another place in Tir. Holding up the card to the door and whisking it passed a small scanner, a small beep issued from the machine, and my apartment door slid right open.

It was exactly as I'd always remembered it...The soft glow of the lights on the ceiling was amplified by the bright, smooth and glossy contours of the apartment walls, which had this white and sterilized feel to them. A carpet I'd remembered lying down years before stretched down the small entry hallway, toward the main room where it was as if time had stopped...

Omni-Tek has access to wonderful climate and environmental controls of their indoor spaces...Unlike the Council of Truth building in Tir, there was not a speck of dust to be found here. Everything here was left as if I had never gone...Everything that remained, that is. Years back, I could remember taking a large box, filling it with whatever I could put into it, and just disappearing into the night after having loaded the Yalmaha up. I never touched the furniture, the holovision set, the chairs or the tables...And all of it was still here.

It did strike me as amazing, considering my history with the corporation in the past year...Looking around me, I had half expected the place to be trashed by Omni-Tek investigators, desperate for any sort of clue or hint as to whether or not I really had anything to do with the shooting of the once-CEO Phillip Ross.

I could remember the nights I would spend in here...softly crying. My every thought, my every waking moment was of why I had thrown away such a good life for this one-room prison lightyears from my family, from my real home. The one thing I remember that would cheer me up every day was a simple photograph...It was by my bedside, in a plastic frame, slightly cracked from a small luggage accident while I was boarding the spacecraft to get here in the first place. Must've been some kind of omen....But as I look toward the bed, the sheets and comforter still laid out the exact same way I had left them, I didn't see the frame..

The night I left came back to me so vividly...It was storming outside, just like it was right now. I was in such a hurry, holding that big box, cramming my clothes, my food, my posessions and memories in there as fast as I could...As you can imagine, an employee defecting was not a thing to be taken lightly, if they were caught in the act. A man hurrying down his hallway with everything he owned was of course going to be su****ious, right? I remember distinctly putting that picture frame right in the bottom of the box...right where I knew it would be. But under the weight of everything else piled atop it, while picking it up I remembered a slight jerking I felt...as something inside the box fell out the bottom. I was feeling so nervous though...thinking maybe it was nothing to be concerned about. I turned with the box snug in my arms, hurrying out the room without looking back, just hoping that nobody would see me.

Bending down slowly....I could see an object poking out from beneath the still-unmade bed. Brown...still clean, and untouched for years...It was exactly what I had come all of this way for. It was a picture of my family, behind slightly cracked plastic. I stood in the center of the photograph, smiling so genuinely, eyes squinted from the bright sun...Mom and dad were beside me, hugging onto one another...They loved one another so much. My grandfather and grandmother, both Rubi-Kan natives, stood tall and narrow beside us all, grandmother giving that small smile she would always give, as the wind played tricks with her wispy, pure white hair.

That day was so....so wonderful. It was all of us, the whole family, gathered for a picnic out in the mountains. I could remember the crystal stream in the background, a small wooden bridge arching over it...It was only a year before I had left for Rubi-Ka, but even at that age I was bouncy and begging for a family photograph right then and there, having set the camera up on a 10-second timer. And when the picture was finished, we just sat in the grass, beneath an enormous oak tree that hung its shadow over the whole photograph, and ate sandwiches. There was nothing else to worry about, to care about....And in my eyes, I could see the anticipation I had at the time, to go to the place my grandparents had come from, and to make them proud.

They forbid it of course....They'd often tell me stories of Rubi-Ka, just like they did while we were eating those sandwiches. Stories of fantastic creatures, of everyday people with extrordinary abilities, and the price paid for those abilities. The frontier, and the promise of an exciting life on that frontier allured me more than I think they realized....Rubi-Ka really was everything they had said it was....Both the good, and the bad. And in situations where there is anything bad, it always seems to weigh twice as heavily...

My heart sunk, looking at that photograph....And all I could do was cry. I slumped to the floor, my back against the bed, the tears just coming faster than I could possibly stop them.

Would I ever see them again...? Did I have any right to see them again...? That last question is the only reason I haven't tried to contact them. Every time I attempt it...my mind changes. I think of others I've met on this world, others who don't have families, or who lost theirs due to any number of circumstances. Not one of them would have ever, in their wildest dreams, given their family up in search of something better....because when you get to the very bottom line, there is nothing better than family. It was my biggest sin....And not sending them a letter, or a message, or a video recording...It was kind of the way I punished myself.

I don't know if I deserve what I've done to myself over the past few years...But at the same time that it feels like self-punishment, it also feels like seeing them again will be that much sweeter, when I finally get away from here...One day, when the Kyr'Ozch are gone and the path to home is free of the threat of death....I will go back there. As hard as it will be for me to face headlong my mistakes, it's something I know I will need to confront. I love my family....I love them more than any word or expression could show. It has to count for something, doesn't it..? I did all of this to make them proud, not because I hated them.

So....I had to make it through. Not just for me, but for them....I don't want the very last memory of their son to be a note left on his bedside. I want the last memories to be good ones, full of me actually being there...to take care of them as they grow old, just as they took care of me as I was young.

Maybe sometimes I look too much inside myself....and not at what the people who are around me right now need. I know that either way I go about what I do here...it is selfish. Selfish to keep myself away from my family, and selfish to keep myself away from Rubi-Ka when so much here is needed and left unaccomplished...

During my time here I'll of course do what I can....and when my time here is up, I will go where I'm most needed...Home. I only hope that anybody here who needed me can forgive me for it...although I don't see any of this coming to pass anytime soon.

[Nulion]

Taking the picture and getting up onto my feet, I gently wiped the rest of my tears away with a gloved hand. This picture here would make my office so much brighter, once it was finished...I'd even keep it in the exact same frame. For now though, I would keep it safely snug inside the shoulder-strapped knapsack I carried along with me.

No sooner than I'd fit the square frame in there, the exact noise I had been dreading to hear tore through the silence like a serrated blade...An air raid siren. It pierced the senses and ripped down whatever mood or feeling I had inside of me, knotting my stomach up and sending me into an instant fit of nausea...I had to get out of there NOW!

I wasted no time, not even hesitating to turn the lightbender back on, bolting quickly out the door. The edges of my vision peeled back into a subtle blur as I ran, boots clopping against the carpeting outside the hallway, the air raid siren starting back up again, its wailing heard more than likely for miles. Commotion rose from all of the rooms behind me, doors beginning to slide open with curious inhabitants peering out into the hall...Chances are, the only thing they saw was the tail end of a fluttering manteau as I banked around the corner, making a mad dash for the elevator.

Running like this, the sirens going off in the distance, reminded me of exactly how it felt last May in Omni-1 Entertainment....Time slows and vision blurs, heart pounding in your throat....The only thing that matters in a time of crisis is the end goal. At the time, it was the grid terminal....And right now, my goal was just in sight...the elevator.

My body slammed heavily into the elevator doors, shaking hands scrambling for the button panel and jamming into the Down button so hard I felt as if my fingers were going to snap in half. I'd never experienced it before...but waiting for an elevator in a time like this is one of those things that, in and of itself, can drive a man insane. I mashed my fist against the button, not even caring what kind of damage I could do to the panel, my body, mind, and soul cringing as I heard that siren flare up again...And each time, it seemed louder...and louder...

I looked from the elevator doors around the hallway, still hearing the commotion rising amidst the piercing siren, looking for a stairwell....Every building, even nowadays, had to have emergency exits, right? And this one did too...I spotted the exit door not five yards from where I was standing, my instinct telling me to bolt for it....But just as I even twitched a single muscle towards moving there, the elevator let off a loud "Ding!" sound, dark marble doors and glass doors sliding open in unison. I stumbled backwards into the elevator, body slumped up against the glass on the inside only for the briefest of moments. As soon as the laws of momentum and inertia would allow me, I jammed my finger into the holographic number 1 on the elevator panel, feeling the elevator slip silently down the shaft...

There was something wrong though....If that siren was for me...if they'd detected me, wouldn't it be a more local siren? Just in this building perhaps. The elevators would have locked down, and my own apartment door would have locked me in. But neither one of those things happened...and that siren, that I can still hear in the distance, was definitely a citywide alarm...Very similar to the ones in Old Athens...

I turned around, feeling a low rumble vibrating the soiled glass beneath my boots, and beheld the vistas of the city of Rome....But it was very different than when I had arrived. Erupting in slow motion from beyond the veil of dark, brooding stormclouds, was the strange phytoplanktonic shape and emerald glow of a Kyr'Ozch supership...

Lightning cracked and whipped across the sky, the gargantuan ship hovering over Rome completely unharmed...It was a monolith of black and green metal, vast amounts of rainwater runoff pouring down the sides of the craft and onto the city below. I've seen those ships so many times, floating icons of the alien race we knew next to nothing about...And every single time, it meant death for innocent people on the ground.

And the innocent people...they were scurrying around the town, not from the rain this time, but from the ship that loomed in the sky...Men and women, and even children who wanted nothing more than to live their lives fled inside, as others with all assortment of weapons ran outside into the rain, some shouting to others to spread out, others to get those who couldn't defend themselves to safety...Unicorns and Omni-AF personel cocked their weapons, their necks craned skywards...

I could see the ships breaking away from their docks on the green mammoth in the sky, jump jets leaving ghostly peridot trails of exhaust through the firmament...The supership's exhaust, as it always does, started to tint the sky itself a strange and otherworldly green...Even through the glass contours of the elevator, I could smell them. I could smell whatever it was that they used to do that to the sky...to scare us. It was their own version of psychological warfare; the fooling of the mind into inferiority, into fear.

Every time I saw the sky do that, it was a stark reminder that we were the ones fighting, for the very first time in human history, against a truly exterior threat....Intelligences vast and cool staring down at us from our own atmosphere, with their own ambitions, their own goals and plans, and their own twisted version of sentience driving their war machine. Nobody knew exactly what they wanted...and it wasn't certain if we would ever find that out. All we can hope to do against them, at least for the moment, is keep shooting.

[Nulion]

Just as the siren rose up in volume again, enough to shake the glass of the elevator, I arrived at the first floor. The doors slid open not to a placid rainswept scene of Omni-Tek daily living, but to a darkened, wet and frantic scene that looked more like an evacuation. I stepped into the lobby, taking my rifle from my back and clutching it in my hands...My heart thumped heavily, nervously....and I could see them from out of the curved windows, stretching from floor to ceiling....The HALO pararoopers.

HALO Paratroopers was an archaic and human way to describe it, yes...but it was the same principle. Paratroopers who dive from a height, precision-landing on the ground and laying waste to everything nearby. High altitude, low opening. They rained down on the city like emerald comets....Falling in the distance, where they landed the flashes of gunfire lanced across the buildings and down the streets. I saw one streak down from the sky, its huge, multilegged and grotesque combat suit landing on ground level like a concrete bomb, sending dirt and rock flying up in a plume all around it, shaking the ground! Pieces of shattered marble and uplifted dirt shot like bullets through the glass in front of me, leaving fist-sized holes in the panes.

Out of instinct I shielded my face, stumbling backwards and onto the hard floor, staring at the ceiling just long enough to see another HALO paratroop screaming through the atmosphere, my eyes making direct contact with it as it fell. In pure twitch reaction, I rolled my body to the left, the world tumbling around me as glass fragmented and rained from the ceiling, a Kyr'Ozch shocktrooper erupting from the roof of the building and plunging HARD into the floor not two feet away, where my face had been just moments ago. Rock, dust, tile and dirt fell in a shower over my body, and for the briefest of moments I couldn't even tell which way was up. It was pure hell, and I was caught in the middle of it...

It took maybe half a second for the fog in my mind to clear, bones rattled and shaken from the impact, the world coming into view with a biometallic monstrosity belting out an alien scream, lunging at me! Shoving my body off of the ground and back onto my feet faster than I'd thought possible, my hands reaching across the rubbled floor to my debris-covered rifle, I grabbed it by the barrel. It was more out of raw instinct that I took the rifle, swinging it briefly over my head, the butt of the gun making a sickening wet CRACK as it sent the smallish creature sliding across the floor, an enormous dent left in its shell.

The Ankari squirmed, its sticklike metal legs clawing at the ground, leaving thin scratches in their wake. I held up my rifle, flipping it in my arms till the barrel aimed down at this flailing creature...watching it bleed some sort of coolant-blood mixture over the floor. I squeezed the trigger thrice, the rifle jolting back in the tiniest bit of recoil as three large holes erupted from the shell of the alien creature, its body shutting down, dying. Its metallic legs went from flailing and panicked, to completely still in three seconds flat.

Unlike other things I killed on this world...I felt no remorse for this thing. Every one of them dead was one small step towards home...I leaned over to spit on the corpse of the alien, scowling and glaring at it..."Welcome to Rubi-Ka." I'd always wanted to say that...and no other time seemed quite as right for it.

[Nulion]

I stepped outside into the cool air, still rife with tension and the echoed cracks and snaps of gunfire. Beads of sweat ran down my forehead, catching my breath a little as I took stock of the view before me. The building I had been in was sat atop an elevated platform, connected to the rest of the city by a network of low-lying bridges that formed an upper and lower level to the city. I could see some of the aliens, their corpses cooling and festering where they had landed, had crashed through the bridges in their descent from the sky. More of them came...pouring out over the city, landing in so many different places that any system of guards, no matter how elite, would have felt overwhelmed.

Down the street, I could see a group of Omni-Tek vigilantes bunched up together as several enormous invaders, some kind of bastardized green centaur of a creature, stomped menacingly toward them. Their energy weapons sizzled and snapped through the air, met with the furious cacophany of noise that only human weaponry could provide. That, and the screaming...Even after all humanity has been through, after all we have evolved and progressed, nothing roused the spirit and steeled the mind like a good, old-fashioned battle cry.

I hurried away from them though...running down the street, leaping over a hole in the pavement. I made my way around them by getting toward the heart of the Rome Green sector, the marketplace district. My vision blurred at the edges, the wind rushing past me as I made a hard turn around a corner. My boots dug into the ground, sliding forward only a few inches, seeing the hulking, atrox-like shape of a Unicorn commando glaring directly at me. "Hold it RIGHT there!!" He nearly screamed, his booming voice holding me right in place...That, and the cannon of a weapon he had attached to his arm, which he had leveled directly at my head. I stared at him as I would the face of death...

But he never shot his weapon...An explosion from the left, down another street from someone's grenade launcher sent flying the entire body of a now dead and still flaming alien, that slammed with the force of a bronto into the Unicorn's side, sending him crashing to the ground. His head was the first thing to make contact with the pavement, the bright oval light on his helmet shattering from the impact, shorting out. Taking only a second to thank whatever higher power had cleared my way, I bolted down the street, leaping over the unconscious body of the Unicorn, making my way out of this damned city!

There were several ways out of Rome...Though the way I had come in was not an option. The subways were a one-way ride, since I had to fall from out of the ceiling to even get inside. Normally, the entrance to the subway tubes are DNA-locked to those who have been granted access, usually to help clean out the mutants and the rogue machinery. There was always the Grid...but it was in Rome Red. There's no way I would make it there, even in this chaos...My best bet was the whom-pah located right in this section of Rome, against the Rome Red wall and toward the center of the city. It led directly to Jobe.

I could see the whom-pah off in the distance as I ran...A long spire stretching into the sky, tipped by a blue transmitter beacon that would take me safely into Jobe. Seperating me from the whom-pah though, was utter chaos...Gunfire sent strings of bullets flying in all directions, met with searing green blasts of plasma and energy that superheated the air itself, leaving rippled and distorted trails of heat ahead of me.

Running beneath a small bridge, I caught my breath for a moment...the whom-pah was still in my peripheral vision to my right. To the left though, was what caught my attention...Charging from behind the veil of smoke from a charred human corpse, a centaurian alien came into view; its battlescarred suit leaked that same green coolant and blood mixture onto the ground beneath it. It screamed something, an unintelligible mess of tangled verbalizations I could never understand. In the corner of my mind, I wish I could...I wish I could sit with one of them and just have a talk, in much the same way I'd been able to do with that Dust Brigade trooper months ago...But that wasn't going to happen.

I held up my rifle with a single arm, the sight lining up with my squinted eyes...The symbiants buried deep inside my arms, squirming masses of programmable bioelectronics pulling the strings of my body, froze my arm in place harder, steadier than any human mind could hope to achieve. I squeezed the trigger, a jet of heat lancing from the barrel of my rifle and directly into the alien's body...and the damn thing barely flinched.

It ran at me as fast as it possibly could, my trigger finger squeezing off another round into its carapace...and that didn't slow the thing one bit. My heart pounded in my throat, bolting from the wall and down the battletorn street, that huge thing right behind me! People, debris, gunfire, smoke, and everything else rushed past me; once out of sight, they were all out of mind.

Banking hard to the left, I leapt onto a small ramp leading up to the top of another of those bridges, only for a brief instant catching the image of the alien behind me. Above and before me though, there was hope...A large sign, formed of a ring that had the word "IMPLANTS" floating in the center was the key! I leapt off of the bridge, my gloved hand grasping the metal ring, twisting my wrist nearly to the point of snapping it, my arm snapping the rifle up in front of me, diagonally angled right at its "head"...if you could call it that. Round after steaming, smoking round pumped from the chamber into its body, each shot sending a spattering of coolant blood against the stone beneath it, splinters of shattered biosuit flying into the air. The alien reached out, as if wanting nothing but to kill me even in its dying breath...until a bullet of mine blasted through its "hand" and into its "skull". The thing slumped down, its body rolling off the bridge and onto the cold pavement, dead.

I let my firm grip of the metallic ring go, falling to the ground, a dull pain surging from my ankles at the impact...But I paid no attention to it, or to the limp body of the dead alien. I ran as fast as my legs, as the symbiants strengthening my legs, would allow me to... I jumped over bodies, human and alien, barreling through a group of exhausted Omni-Pol men who didn't care one iota for me being there...and without slowing down in the least, leapt directly into the cool blue embraces of the Jobe whom-pah....my body fizzling off into nothing.

[Nulion]

It only took a second...a second of nothingness and silence...My senses had all shut down, the sounds, smells, sights and feelings of battle evaporating away. But a second is just that; a second...the briefest amount of time a human mind can enjoy. But what happens after that second makes all the difference...

After my second of nothing, there was the rush of wind...the feeling of inertia and of flying...The world opened up and blossomed back into being as I shot out of the whom-pah and onto Jobe Platform, skidding only a foot or so on my back...The warm suns and blue skies greeted me, seeing behind me the enormous islands of the Jobean archepelago. There were no green skies....no Omni-Tek propaganda, no aliens, no sirens...There was only the wind. That, and a group of people who were sitting on the Platform minding their business, surprised to see a clansman jettison from out of the Rome Green whom-pah. They must've been wondering why the very first thing he did, even before sitting up from the ground, was pull a cracked old frame from out of an old knapsack...staring at it with a small smile crossing his face...

I knew though....I'd gone through hell and back for a memory....A wonderful memory, that was worth more in the world to me than anything else. Memories stay with you...they are indestructible and they are always there....but they can fade over time. They can be tainted, or have a newer memory superimposed over them. They can be tattered or faint...but they can never be destroyed. The only thing it takes to dredge up the memories of old and make them as if they'd happened moments ago was a photograph. Just one glance...and you're home.

How far would YOU go for a memory?

I'd go to the ends of the earth...and then some.

~Fin~

[Naefen]

((I should slap you silly for posting that much all at once Ok, now I can start reading))

[Nulion]

((Hehe, sorry about that...but I like having my stories allll ready to go in one shot ....Though it took me like 20 minutes just to post the danged thing o.o ))

[Vahishta]

(( Very very good story ))

[Nulion]

((Thanks ))

[Nulion]

((So....anybody else enjoy it? Can't help but be curious ))

[Toxor]

(nice. :P oh and IC the Kyr'Ozch havent given us their name. They are just the aliens.)

[Nulion]

((Well, I'd have thought you'd be getting unit names and the whole name of the species and such off of things they had been carrying with them, but not much more than that.))

[Jacob Stroud]

((Damn Nulion, that's one of the best AO stories ever written. Definately your best so far.))