"The Anti-X Encounter"
Part 6
Rivqua's and Zana's limp bodies were laid into the two cocoon-like coffins. The dinosaur closed the lids and rolled them away. No further instructions came from Commander Cordyte. The giant spider was engrossed in the preparations to finish the robots. Now that they had the scanned exteriors of the girls to model the droids' appearance after.
Raptaur came out of the extraction chamber and steered the cocoons down the passage. His expression was still that of a lonesome alligator in a dull swamp. Yet he seemed to move with an urgency he hadn't shown before.
At the elevator he pushed the call button. He cast glances both ways down the passage with customary boredom. Snorted and hissed a bit. Spat into a corner. Scratched his butt. The elevator arrived, the doors slid open and he wheeled the coffins in.
He pressed a floor called 'Fitness Center & Social Club'. The doors slid shut and the elevator started downwards with a small jerk.
The car slowed to a stop and the doors opened.
Raptaur did nothing. He just stood there in the elevator, waiting. Bored.
He snorted and took a casual look out. He knew what was on this floor. An old abandoned department. Piles of junk lay around. Equipment was covered with sheets, like artifacts in a museum basement.
There was no need for a fitness center on Anti-X anymore, or a social club. Not since the carbon-basers left all that time ago. So here was a suitable place not used for anything, in which the Blonde Plutoz could spend millennia lying in suspended animation in their high-tech cocoons.
Yup, that was Raptaur's job, to take care of that.
He didn't do a thing. Just looked his usual depressed self and waited. Maybe hissed a little.
The doors slid shut again. As soon as they did Raptaur suddenly became alert. He pulled a key from his tool belt and turned the security lock at the bottom of the panel. Next to it a small sign lit up.
'Vaults'.
The elevator jerked downwards again. Raptaur drummed his claws on the wall next to the panel. "Come on, slowcoach..." he muttered through clenched fangs.
The elevator car came to a halt and slid open its doors once more. Raptaur pushed the coffins out. He rolled them quickly through what seemed to be a big warehouse. In between tall shelves he dashed, down endless alleys. The wheels of the cocoons squeaked. Under the see-through lids Rivqua's and Zana's limp heads rolled from side to side.
The dinosaur finally slowed down, panting heavily. He rolled the coffins into a cave. That is, an area in the far corner of the warehouse that had a cave-ish feel to it.
Draperies of all colors hung in utter abandon around the place. Stretched between steel pillars was a large hammock, loaded with cushions. A bed of hot coals glowed on a flat rock right in the middle of the floor. Roasting away over it was a chicken, or something in that neighborhood.
Raptaur hurried over to a shelf and pulled down a steel case. He dug around inside it, found what he was looking for. A syringe again. Less high-tech, quite basic. And several small vials of liquid. He filled the syringe with the contents of one vial.
A sharp sound of escaping air came from Rivqua's cocoon as he yanked it open. The systems had begun adjusting the atmosphere. Grabbing her arm he punched the needle into her flesh and emptied the syringe.
He did exactly the same with Zana.
Then he stepped backwards, like he'd just beaten an opponent in a close fight and had to catch his breath. He checked the watch on his tool belt. He'd done it in plenty of time, which was good. The big question now was, would it work? The stuff being so out of date and all. And how would their bodies react?
Time would tell.
Raptaur sat down on a stool beside the fireplace and pulled off a leg from the chickenny thing and started nibbling. His bored countenance had been replaced by a look of anxiety. The presence of the two girls had done something to the old dinosaur. He couldn't figure out what. But for once, in all the time cooped up in this over-mechanized nuthouse called Anti-X, there was a reason to do something. And it felt worthwhile.
Time would indeed tell, he sighed to himself and took a larger bite of the grilled poultry leg.
A whole stream of long, agonizing seconds went by. Raptaur checked his watch again. He shook his head again. He looked like someone really not wanting to face a hard truth, but perhaps having to.
Then, all of a sudden, two things happened. Both of them extremely close together. Rivqua sat up like a coiled spring releasing and yelled at the top of her voice, "You take that back or so help me I'll sock you one between the eyes!" By the time she'd reached the end of that sentence powerful singing was belting out of the other coffin. Zana was well into the middle eight of their first Megatopian hit. She hadn't bothered sitting up and seemed to be quite comfortable the way she was.
Raptaur fell off his stool. His helmet rolled away and knocked into a flimsy painter's easel, sending his most successful artistic effort up to this point cartwheeling over the floor and into the smoldering coals, where it was now catching fire.
Zana sat up and found Rivqua. They stared at each other in bewilderment. Their pupils were dilated from chemical interactions.
"What are you doing?" Zana said.
"I told him to shut up," Rivqua replied. "Are you cooking something?"
"Could be, I don't know who to ask though," said Zana. "Do you?"
Rivqua rubbed her face.
"I feel weird. Perhaps we should just forget it."
"Nah, I can't remember either," said Zana and fell back into the coffin.
After a few seconds she sat up again. "Smells good though."
"Tell whoever it's overdone, will you?" Rivqua said.
"Tell who?"
"Not me. Somebody. Whoever."
"That would be me," said Raptaur, smacking the burning painting with a rag.
"Aaargh!!" the girls screamed, noticing him.
"Who're you!?" Rivqua cried.
The rag whipped the smoky air and glowing fragments whirled.
"I know!" Zana shouted, snapping her fingers at him. "You're you!" She turned to Rivqua, "That's- you know, him!"
"So it is! Wow, stuff's coming back to me!"
Raptaur chuckled and spoke in his rumbling voice, not bored any longer. "I'm sure glad you ladies are back. For a while I wasn't sure, but I guess you all must have mighty good genes or somethin'.
"You injected us!" Rivqua said. "That's so weird!"
"Had to, Miss. It was the only way to save you."
"But you're with them! Crazy lady Cordyte, the droids, Anti-X, everything-! Aren't you?"
"Yeah, why save us?" Zana said. "I'm not complaining, just asking-"
The dinosaur looked at his blackened painting. He blew sooty flakes off it and shook his head. "Wasn't much good anyway," he muttered and put the ruined masterpiece back on the easel.
The chicken looked worse. He picked it up, shook the worst of it off and took a bite without a second thought and sat down again.
"Yeah, I'm with them alright. Got no choice there, I'm afraid. Doesn't mean I think what they do is right."
Rivqua nodded slowly.
"I understand."
"My name is Raptaur and this is the Vault. It's my spot. Would you like to get out of those Sams? They're meant for lying down. Not sitting up."
The girls' bearings were coming back. They noticed the cocoons they were in. Rivqua drew her arms close, as if the sides were cold to the touch.
"These are your suspended animation modules?"
Raptaur gave an awkward nod, like he felt bad about what he'd done. The girls climbed out. He invited them to take the hammock.
"I was meant to put you away for good," he explained. "To Commander Cordyte, suspended animation is a one-way trip. Sure, she would've have woken you up later. Only to put you in your ship and let Smart Nook blow you to smithereens. And afterwards study the pieces."
The girls couldn't believe it.
"She would've used us for target practice?" Zana said, sinking into the fabulous mass of cushions.
Raptaur nodded. "It's not the first time either. But I'm done now. This is the end of the road. When I saw you, I knew I couldn't let that happen to you. For once in my life, I decided to disobey orders."
"For our sakes?" said Rivqua. "Why?"
Raptaur shrugged.
"I'm a carbon-baser myself."
Stay tuned for Part 7 of "The Anti-X Encounter"!
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