Children of a Lesser God

Dwayne and everyone else just took a deep breath, but didn't say anything. It was clear to them that Jennia had snapped, but none of them had the ability to handle her.

"Ok then. Well... Dwayne, bro?"

"Uh... yes... yeah?"

"You pretty sure this building is some sort of power terminal?"

"Uh... is she going to hit me if I'm wrong?" Dwayne whispered, trying to hide it from Ruby.

She obviously heard and smiled, causing Dwayne to shiver.

"She's not going to hit you."

"Ok. I mean... yeah, you look around and most buildings have a line or two going in, but this one has dozens. I'm thinking some in and some out. Like a power station or something?"

"Good enough for now. We are going in to check it out."

"All of us?" Dwayne asked.

"No. Just us. Take her and get going back to the meeting spot. Get everyone together and move towards the gate. Also note down if you see anything else that could be like this building here. I fee like you're right, but better to be safe than sorry," Laz responded back, patting Dwayne's shoulder to calm him down.

Although Laz didn't know for sure, he wasn't just basing his guess on what Dwayne said. He had some memories that weren't his that seemed to suggest that this would be what the power station for the gate looked like. Laz could only assume it had something to do with what his teacher had done to him. Laz felt like there was far more he had learned that just what he had been told.

His teacher may have been confined to the lab, but the knowledge he had would far out weigh anything Laz could even dream of learning. Rak'sha's knowledge was the accumulation of many, many years and spanned the galaxy. Laz didn't even technically pass high school.

"Why are we heading for the gate now when we got so much left to check out here?" Dwayne wondered why it seemed like Laz was in a hurry. This place was huge and had tons of stuff left to uncover. And even Dwayne knew that once they got out, there would probably not be another chance to get back in considering the gate was in enemy territory.

"This place is going to be destroyed... and soon."

"Dude? Seriously?"

"Yeah. Two days at most... One giant fucking creature is going to rip this whole outpost a new one and we don't want to be here when it does..."

"The fuck?"

"Don't worry about that for now. Do the meet up, getting everyone to head back to the gate and try to avoid those chosen bastards, ok?"

"Sure thing boss man. Damn this girl is putting on some weight..." Dwayne lifted Jennia up and put her over his shoulder. He then waved for everyone to follow him while Ruby and Laz made their way inside.

"What's wrong?" Ruby asked..

"I think... there might be more than just the creature to worry about..."

"What more could their be? Isn't this enough already?" Ruby seemed confused. She was thinking that the base being destroyed by the final boss was already the end... what else could there be to fear?

Laz couldn't answer since he wasn't sure. Once again, it was something to the nature of a thought in his head that he had no idea how it got there. Laz was really weirded out by these random thoughts since he didn't know when he would get them and didn't know if they were real. It was kind of like hallucinating in real time, but in short flashes.

"Let's get moving," Laz said, going into the metal monster of a building. Luckily for him, Ruby trusted him enough to not ask questions and therefore he didn't need to explain himself. Besides, there was no sense in worrying her if he was wrong.

Following his gut, Laz took quite a few turns and ended up standing at the glass doors of what could only be considered a command center. Not only did they not encounter any trouble on the way through, but it was almost like things seemed to ignore them.

"That was easy," Laz commented, to which Ruby agreed with a small smile after he turned around. It was clear that she had done something, but she didn't share. All couples have their secrets.

The doors opened without issue, allowing Laz and Ruby to stand in front of a large terminal. The many screens were small, being about the size of a post card but the sheer amount of them was mind numbing. The camera's seemed to monitor every inch of the outpost, allowing Laz and Ruby a view they couldn't have gotten otherwise. Of course, there was also many of the monitors that were no longer operational.

"Why are they so small?"

"Uh... I'm guessing that for whoever or whatever would have been standing here, they didn't need to be larger? Like if your eye sight was good enough, wouldn't a small screen serve just as well as a large one?" Laz responded back. Normally, Ruby would be more knowledgeable about things like security. But this wasn't Earth so earth logic didn't apply.

"Can we really find a shut off for this? Hey... look..." Ruby pointed at one screen and frowned while Laz looked over.

The people on the screen were a mixed group, but Laz could make out more than one familiar face, namely, they were the people who had ran off after Laz and Ruby killed the others. They had met up with their companions and looked like they were in a heated debate. Sadly there was no sound to hear what they were saying. Of if there was, Laz didn't know how to use it.

"We should have killed them all," Ruby said, thinking back and shaking her head. Although they weren't strong, they weren't weak either. There was no way Laz and Ruby could have killed them all before they fled so them being reported was bound to happen.

Laz never once thought they would get out of this without being discovered.

"That bastard..." Laz noticed Tommy within the group. He didn't have a profound hatred for him per say, but knowing that this bastard was Kennedy's 'ex' just seemed to piss him off.

"You guys have a history?" Ruby asked, intrigued.

"Yeah. Classmates growing up I guess you could say?"

"And yet here you are baby. You're not going to get all sentimental and not detach his head from his body if you get the chance, right love?"

"I will piss in his skull and shit down his neck if I have the chance," Laz said, still annoyed.

"Damn. You've never been this worked up before... It's really turning me on..." Ruby said, sliding up to Laz and kissing him.

Laz had no choice but to pry his eyes off the monitor and return Ruby's kiss. She wasn't the kind to be ignore.

"Better?" She asked after they had finally broken the kiss.

"Yes. Hmm... I wonder why I..." Laz understood that he was letting his emotions get the better of him. On a normal day, that wasn't an issue. But here, that could be deadly.

"It's ok. But keep it together. Besides, you'll have your chance at him." Ruby smile while hugging Laz's thin but firm frame.

"He's not going to be an easy opponent."

"Oh? Why's that, hmm?" Ruby said while observing other screens.

"Because... you could say he has had his power as long as I have. In fact, he was the first chosen I encountered..."

"Really," Ruby looked over, interested.

"Yeah."

"That is a problem. Both us and them share one common trait. The longer we have our abilities, the stronger we get."

"I know."

"Well, we will deal with it when it comes to it. Take a deep breath and settle your head and start helping me look for the gate monitor. Maybe that will show us something?"

Laz and Ruby started looking through all the screens, the thousands of them, in an attempt to find the one showing the gate area.

"Over here." Ruby found it first.

"OK. Let's see... If this screen shows the gate, then something underneath it must show the damn force field thing blocking the gate," Laz said, looking at the controls under the monitor. Neither him nor Ruby knew what they were looking for, but it seemed like the right path.

"Is this... how do we interact with this?" Ruby said. Although there were things that looked like buttons, in truth, they were actually just lights. As opposed to being used for input, it seemed more like they were just some sort of indicating device.

"It's... wait a sec." Laz had some info in his head that was trying to come to the surface. But like a long past memory, it wasn't clear.

"Talk it out baby, what do you see?" Ruby, understanding his trouble, suggested something.

"This race... they discarded their bodies for that of machines in order to gain eternal life. It was only after they had done this that they realized that they had screwed their potential to evolve... So even while they were stuck as machines with digital consciousness, they maintained that they would be able to become flesh and blood once again..." The memories in Laz's head were playing out like a documentary as such, he was just relaying the info that came to him to Ruby.

"Then that means..?"

"It means... the terminals have a plug that only the machines themselves can use... but they had a display oriented override for the day that they became flesh yet again... here..." With that thought in mind, Laz waved his hand over a dome shaped light, causing a blue screen display to open up above the terminal, floating above it like an overlay. The best part was there there was actual writing that indicated what things did.

"Rapture?" Ruby said, looking at the top of the screen.

"They wished to express what feeling they would get if the research here was successful."

"How do you know all this?"

"I guess you could say that my teacher knew of this place since it was local to the area?"

"And your teacher didn't care?"

"Why would a bird concern itself with the daily life of an ant? As far as they were concerned, these mechanical creatures couldn't even be considered a threat. So why would they bother dealing with it?" Laz, feeling this memory, seemed to want to dryly laugh, a feeling that wasn't his own. He could only guess that after feeling this way about these people and yet ending up a subject here, his teacher couldn't help but find it ironic.

"And yet to us, these weaklings are a people we could never hope to match," Ruby lamented.

"Kind of reminds you that we are even less than ants in the dealings of the universe."

"Thanks for that loving reminder darling. You sure know how to perk a girl's confidence..."

"You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals.."

"If you finish that line, I swear to the goddess I will kick you in the balls... I might give them a kiss after words, but you will have brought it on yourself."

"Ok. And back to this."

Looking over the screen, Laz was able to find what he was looking for since the language that he only remotely understood was now much clearer thanks to his eyes.

Unfortunately, it was going to be a bigger problem than he thought.

"Does that... say what I think it does?" Ruby asked, pointing to the screen.

"You can read that?" Laz asked.

"Only a little. But if what it's saying is true, then the force field is a hard line that can't be opened. Meaning that the only way to get it to go down is to cut off the power to this entire gird, right?"

"Basically. I wonder why they didn't want the gate to be used at all."

"Focus Laz. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that if we do this, the entire place shuts down. So your big boss is going to get out as soon as that happens. And do you see this? What are all these red dots outside of the boarder?" Ruby pointed to an over watch display that showed hundreds of thousands of small red dots surrounding the entire outpost.

"My guess would be enemies?"

"Yeah. Which means that if we do this, not only will we have the big boss to worry about. But we will also be flooded with whatever these things are.... wait. Is this what you were worried about?" Thinking back, Ruby remembered Laz indicated that the big creature destroying the base might not be their biggest problem.

"Yeah... yes."

"Fucking hell babe..."

"It's not my fault...?"

"So now what?"

After Ruby said that, the entire building shook from an earthquake as a bunch of gages sprang to life, indicated a massive power flux in the underground prison area. After the shaking finally stopped, Laz looked at Ruby.

"Damned if we do and damned if we don't?"

"I don't know how the hell I fell in love with you..." Ruby winced at Laz's words.

'I know of at least one reason...'

Laz was thinking it, but decided it was better not to say it.