Mastermind, page 12
part #1 of Mastermind's Mutants Series
“What?”
“I feel like it was my idea to go through that portal. I just couldn’t believe my eyes, and when you see something so amazing in front of you, it’s kinda hard to resist.”
“No,” said Ray, shaking his tired head. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I should’ve gone alone. We just met. It wasn’t fair to ask you to come along.”
“But Ray,” she said, moving closer to him. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” She leaned over and kissed him. “And I’m so glad I got to experience this with you.”
He smiled. “Some first date, huh?”
“I know, right!”
“We better get moving,” said Ray, summoning all his strength to stand up. “Luke’s gotta be somewhere in here.”
Ray helped Dawn to her feet.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s pick a direction and hope we get lucky.”
“Sure,” said Ray. “Because we’ve had such great luck so far today.”
“Exactly!” said Dawn. “What more could possibly go wrong?”
“You had to say that, didn’t you?”
She smiled.
Chapter Ten
Belly of the Beast
The giant alien snake had swallowed them whole.
Luke suddenly knew what it felt like to swallow a bug – from the bug’s point of view. Dark, sticky, wet, and hot. He felt enormous muscles on every side press against him and push him farther down into the beast. Within the eternity of a second, he felt himself unwillingly pushed into the creature’s stomach, a large spacious area filled with warm sticky goo, a tight enclosed space with only a tiny amount of air left to breathe.
His uncle suddenly got shoved up next to him.
Oh my God. He was going to die in here.
Eaten alive, swallowed whole, left to be digested in some monster’s stomach in the dark depths of an underground cavern on some God-forsaken alien planet.
If that morning you had asked him how he expected to die, this would have never crossed his mind. And yet, now here he was.
It was already getting hard to breathe. The little oxygen got used up in just a few short breaths.
Twenty six years old. Never married. Never had any kids. Never had a career. Never saw the world, followed a dream, or made any difference. So young, so unexpectedly, it was all over just like that. He struggled to breathe. This was it. He was about to die.
But no. His uncle was right. He gave up too easily. There had to be a way out. But where? How?
This would’ve been a great time for his uncle to reveal some other powers – like laser vision, energy blasts, or razor-sharp claws.
“Uncle!” Luke strained to say from inside the snake’s guts. He reached around inside the warm, confined, murky and sticky belly. He couldn’t see a thing. The slimy lining of the beast’s stomach stuck to the back of his neck and covered much of his body. Sticky warm juice – probably the beast’s own digestive acid – slowly started to sting Luke’s flesh.
He gasped for breath from the small air pocket along the side of his face. His lungs started to burn now too. He had precious seconds remaining before he choked to death in here.
He whispered, calling out for his uncle. He needed to conserve his breath – every breath needed to count.
His uncle didn’t respond.
Maybe he was already dead? Maybe the creature chewed him a bit first. Maybe Luke was just the appetizer.
“Uncle,” he whispered, more of a prayer that his uncle was still alive than a call for help now.
Still nothing.
Damn. He resisted the urge to cough, knowing instinctively it would quickly become uncontrollable.
He had to do something. And he had to do it fast.
What were his options? He had no powers, no weapons, no tools. Wait. He still had that crystal. Maybe he could use that somehow. Open up a portal inside the snake’s belly? That might work. Or poke at it and make it vomit them back up? Possibly. Or…
The muscles around the stomach started to contract. They pushed against Luke, squeezing him tight.
Now he was to be crushed to death before he suffocated.
Awesome.
He reached into his pocket for the crystal.
The space in the stomach grew even tighter. He felt his uncle’s body pressed up against his – and suddenly, the muscles around them convulsed violently, and uncontrollably, Luke and his uncle were launched back up through the snake’s throat again—
—tossed out onto the cold hard floor.
Luke rolled several feet, crashing against a stone wall. Charlie’s body slid against the floor with the same momentum.
There was light in here.
Not much. A faint red glow all around, from an unknown source down the tunnel up ahead. Luke saw the giant snake’s sharply-toothed mouth open in front of them. Did it just vomit them up? Then why was it about to eat them again?
Luke quickly looked around, hoping for an exit or something he could use to defend himself. Nothing. It was a small enclosed cave. Just a narrow tunnel ahead, where the red light seemed to be coming from.
The snake’s mouth opened wider as it made a hissing, rattling sound. Luke saw the inside of its mouth. It had two rows of sharp teeth. A long flailing tongue. And swelling sacks or glands of some kind on each side. Suddenly those sacks contracted, and a white substance fired out of the snake’s mouth, quickly covering Luke.
The substance was sticky, like a thick spider web, that quickly hardened, trapping him where he sat. The snake angled its mouth towards his uncle’s body – which was heavily bleeding – and quickly covered him too.
Some of the sticky web substance landed on Luke’s face and neck, but most of it covered his arms and legs and torso, making it nearly impossible for him to move. But at least he could breathe now. For some reason, the snake wanted them alive.
At least… for the moment.
There were animals on Earth that sometimes captured or temporarily swallowed live prey – only to feed them to their young later. Or worse, maybe it was going to use them as host bodies, and implant its snake alien eggs inside their guts! Or maybe the snake simply wasn’t hungry yet, and was merely saving them as a later meal. Like a spider keeping a bug trapped in its web.
Either way, the outcome was the same. They had bought some time, but some form of horrible death still awaited them.
Charlie moaned.
“Uncle!” Luke shouted.
Charlie moaned again.
“Uncle, wake up! Are you okay?”
“I feel… ohhhh… ”
“You’ve lost a lot of blood. Try to conserve your strength.”
“That would explain the intense pain in my side.”
His uncle must’ve scraped against the snake’s teeth when they got swallowed. Probably got caught and cut up. But, with any luck, it wouldn’t be fatal. People survive shark bites all the time. This was no different.
He hoped.
Except there wasn’t a hospital around for several light-years.
“Just hold on,” Luke said.
His uncle tried to be strong. “Where are we? I thought we were dead.”
“I don’t know.”
Charlie tried to move. His body was completely immobilized, but considering his severe wounds, that was probably a good thing for him. He was able to move his neck a bit, though, and look around.
“Seems we’re in some kind of cave. What’s down there?”
Red light emitted from the tunnel. “I have no idea.”
“Lot of heat coming from there. I bet…” His pain started to overwhelm him. “I bet,” he struggled to speak, “that’s probably our way out.”
“Don’t try to move. Just relax. I’m gonna… I’m gonna figure something out.”
His uncle smiled. “That’s my boy.”
Sure. But what?
Meanwhile, the giant alien snake just sat in the corner, watching… and waiting.
Chapter Eleven
Temple of the Gods
“I’m betting on alien space ship,” Dawn said.
The corridors were all perfectly straight. Ceilings were fairly high. Evenly spaced lights lined the walls, illuminating their way. Not to mention, the outer walls of the pyramid seemed to be made of some kind of metal alloy. Plus a high-tech mechanical door with an electronic control panel at the entrance. It all seemed to point to one thing: this pyramid was some kind of space ship.
“I don’t believe in aliens,” said Ray.
“Really?” she asked, still walking.
“Flying saucers abducting cows and people, prodding them with metal sticks, and then dumping them off naked in some field somewhere… I doubt it.”
“Well, I’m not saying all alien stories are true.”
“It just seems too unlikely. Even if there were intelligent life on other worlds, what are the odds they’d find and come to Earth?”
“Okay,” said Dawn. “Then how do you explain this? We’re inside a giant pyramid on another world. Two moons, two suns. You know we’re not on Earth.”
“I didn’t say there weren’t other planets.”
“But why is there a pyramid here; similar design to the ones found on Earth?”
“I don’t know. It’s an architecturally simple, stable design.”
“But who built it here?”
“Oh, I see. Sorry, I’m a little dehydrated. Uh, I dunno. But just because it’s here doesn’t mean aliens exist, or they’ve visited Earth. In fact,” he said, “we came through a portal on Earth to get here. Who’s to say a similar portal didn’t open up somewhere else, and modern humans went through and started building this place?”
“You really don’t want to believe in aliens, do you?”
“In comic books and movies, fine. But in real life? We’ve got enough problems on Earth already. Do we really need to add extraterrestrials to the list?”
“True. Our military would probably blow any alien ship out of the sky as soon as they saw it. Ask questions later kind of thing.”
They passed another junction – they could’ve turned left or right, but decided to keep going straight. If they started making random turns, it’d be really easy to get lost in here. Every corridor looked pretty much the same.
“But still,” said Dawn. “I believe aliens, and intelligent life, are out there. And who knows, maybe some have visited us in the past.”
“Well you and my roommate would get along great. He’s totally into that sort of stuff.”
“God, I’m so thirsty.”
“Me too.” He called out for his roommate again, sending his voice down the corridors. “Luke! Hello? Anybody?”
Nothing.
“This place gives me the creeps,” he said.
“You think it’s abandoned?”
“It’s still running on power. If it was abandoned, it couldn’t have been that long ago.”
“Oh!” said Dawn, getting a little excited. “Maybe they’re still on board.”
“Who, Luke?”
“The aliens!”
Ray gritted his teeth. “Let’s hope not. I really don’t want to add that to my list of ‘weird things that happened’ today.”
Going in a straight line paid off.
It eventually led them to a door. Same mechanics as the entrance outside. A large circular doorway with a control panel next to it on the wall. A small video screen and three buttons: red, green, and blue.
Ray tried the blue one first, the same one that opened the entrance door.
And it worked. They heard large heavy deadbolts unlocking. The door rolled to the side, opening the way inside.
What it opened to was nothing less than amazing.
They must’ve reached the center of the pyramid. The vaulted ceiling hung over a mile high, coming to a point at the pyramid’s tip. Four angled walls surrounded them – flat, smooth, and mirror-like. Concentric circles lined the floor, illuminated, all centering around a pedestal in the middle.
The pedestal was ornately designed, carved out of some kind of stone, with detailed images and shapes on every side. The carvings represented some kind of animals or creatures. Nothing either of them recognized. Some kind of winged creature, something reptilian-looking, a humanoid figure with an enlarged head, and something aquatic-looking emerged out of each of the four sides of the stone pedestal.
The illuminated concentric circles on the floor were not normal lights, like the usual ones that lit the corridor walls. No, these were actual symbols and letters – an alien language – written in light, across the floor.
And each circle was illuminated with a different color, starting with purple in the outermost ring, then blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and finally white with each concentric ring inward towards the center pedestal.
Were they warnings, instructions, or the names of the pyramid designers? Other messages entirely, perhaps? They could only guess.
“Still don’t believe in aliens?” Dawn asked.
Ray remained silent.
A brilliant beam of light suddenly appeared from the center top of the massively high ceiling, shining down brightly and evenly over the pedestal like some kind of mystical spotlight.
As they cautiously walked closer, they saw their reflections mirrored to infinity on the walls. The light beam shining down on the pedestal grew brighter and brighter as they drew nearer. The circular alien writing on the floor also grew brighter, glowing with increasing intensity with each step toward that pedestal.
Ray looked to Dawn. Not sure what to do. Not sure what to say. Not sure what to even think about all of this.
Dawn felt the same way. But whatever this room was, they were approaching something very significant, very special… perhaps even something religiously sacred.
A few steps closer and Ray started to see an illusion hovering inches above the pedestal. It appeared like a glass sphere, fading into view the nearer they got.
“What is that?” Dawn asked.
“I don’t know.”
They hesitantly stepped even closer.
Ray began to see his own reflection – but only his – within the hovering sphere.
Dawn saw her own reflection, but nothing else.
Ray stepped up to the pedestal. The spotlight shined down brightly from overhead, completely engulfing them in its brilliant white light.
The concentric circles of alien writing on the floor also illuminated ever brighter, beaming colorful energy straight up into the air. And the massive room’s mirrored walls only amplified and intensified all this light and energy – filling the entire vaulted room with a flood of brilliant colors, swelling light, and an aura of magic and sacred mystery.
It was beautiful, magical, and mystifying.
And the sphere, hovering above the pedestal, was so vivid and clear it looked almost tangible now.
Ray cautiously reached out to touch it.
“What are you doing?!” Dawn shouted.
“Is it real?” Ray couldn’t tell. There was an “other-worldly” essence to it. Something mysterious, magical, extra-dimensional. It looked solid and real – and at the same time, nothing more than an illusion, a hologram, or a hallucination.
Dawn looked around nervously. She was all for adventure and exploring – but this was beginning to be a bit too much. The lights, the massive room, the pyramid itself, the alien world – this pedestal was clearly an object of great significance.
Maybe mere mortals like them shouldn’t be messing with it.
Ray touched the floating sphere.
His fingers went right through it. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t tangible.
“Huh,” he said. “Guess not.”
But when he tried to pull his fingers back, out of the sphere, he couldn’t. They were stuck. He tried pulling harder.
“What? What?” Dawn asked.
“I’m stuck!” he exclaimed.
She helped pull his wrist. He placed one foot against the pedestal for leverage. They pulled with all their might. Nothing. Not even the tiniest budge. His fingers were stuck inside!
He stopped for a second. He needed a new plan.
But just then, some unexplained force began pulling his hand deeper into the sphere.
“Whoa!” he said, feeling its constant and gentle pull. “It’s… it’s pulling me in.”
The sphere wasn’t that big. Maybe six inches in diameter or so. There wasn’t much “in” for him to be pulled into. And yet, slowly, more of his fingers did move in – followed by his hand, then his wrist, and half of his arm.
“Help!”
The pull only got stronger.
Dawn stood behind him, wrapped her arms around him, and leaned back, pulling with all her might.
The rest of Ray’s arm slid inside the sphere, disappearing as soon as it entered.
Dawn pulled back harder and harder. God, she needed more strength. Suddenly, she felt her arm muscles growing again – just like before, when she wrestled with the mutant cat-girl Tiffany.
“What the hell?” she remarked, as her arms grew larger and stronger. All the muscles in her body increased in size. She suddenly had a lot more strength.
But it was no use. Ray’s entire right arm was inside the sphere, up to his shoulder. To make matters worse, the sphere had started to enlarge.
“I’m not going to let you go!” exclaimed Dawn.
“Save yourself!”
The sphere quickly doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled in size. And it kept growing!
“Get back!” he told her.
The sphere engulfed half his torso. Dawn had let go just in time. She stepped back, away from the ever-expanding sphere. It was now almost six feet in diameter, consuming the entire pedestal, and Ray right along with it.
His face started to be absorbed by the sphere. Ray strained to look towards Dawn. “Just get out of here,” he said as part of his mouth began disappearing along the edge of the sphere. “Please.”
Dawn reached for him.
“No!”
Two-thirds of his face – and nearly all his body – was now inside the sphere.
“Ray!” she exclaimed.
He said something – but she couldn’t hear him. His mouth was entirely inside the sphere. She watched as it continued to pull him in, inch by inch, until only the last traces of his left ear, hand, and foot could still be seen.
