Chapter 75: __________*_Ember_*__________

__________*_Ember_*__________

Crystal: "There! That door!"

She stated, highlighting the door by flashing it yellow on my HUD as we rounded a corner into another Hallway. This hallway was slightly different to the others we had passed through. The left side had the same, almost surgical white, seamless metal clad wall, but the right side of it was made of glass, which looked out over the valley of egg shaped cells. I didn't have time to take in the view though, time wasn't on my side and 2 guards were down the far end of the hall, raised their rifles.

They didn't get a chance to squeeze off any rounds though, I flung one of my almost mystical magical attacks at them by batting my arm in their direction. Like a wave, blue energy smashed hard into them, sending the pair flying back into the doors with a mighty crash and crunches from both of them, bouncing off of the steel doors and crumpling to the floor motionless. I halted my sprint as I arrived at the doors, stepping over one of the bodies and placing my gloved hand over the security console beside the door.

Crystal: "Hacking..... Done." The double doors clonked, slid open and I made my way inside.

Ember: "Alright, let me out..." The front of my armour opened to release me from it's protective shell and I stepped free and forward a few paces. "...Bow." I ordered my armour. My mainly black armour with pin striping of gold lacing on the helmet, shoulder guards, chest plate and knees - closed itself back up. Controlled by Crystal, my AI friend, my only friend, she obliged my request, pulled the compound bow from her back, throwing it to me as I stepped back towards the doorway of the abandoned lab. The bow, consisting of an orange riser with black limbs and orange and black strings and guild cables, landed on my outstretched hand.

Ember: "Alright, I'll cover us as much as I can. Get what you can Crystal, Alex is fucking this all up, so it's up to us to bring this company down." I instructed as I headed back towards the entrance door of this server room.

Crystal: "On it..." She stated confidently from the armour, then proceeded over to the nearest server rack, placing an outstretched hand onto the nearest server. "...Download in progress. This is going to take a while..." She trailed off.

Ember: "How long?"

Crystal: "Rough estimate at the moment, is around 22 minutes."

A loud explosion resonated through the base, panels, doors, anything even slightly loose, vibrated. The discomforting sounds of gun fire and screaming and shouting that had been accompanying us throughout our journey down and into this SkyTech base were gradually getting louder and even more unsettling.

Ember: "2 minutes is too long."

Crystal: "I'd like to see you do better than the approximately 3 terabyte per second download speed that I'm currently managing."

Ember: "Alright, point made. Maybe focus more on the experiments and illegal research more than any other crap."

Crystal: "Of course."

I breathed a small sigh of relief as I rested my back against the door frame. 

'This wasn't over, I know that, but we were close, soo close. I don't get it, from what I heard, Alex wanted to expose Sky High Technologies for what they were doing to people like us. Now she was just tearing the place up, destroying anything that she could use against them.'

I then looked down at the bow in my hand... Orange riser frame, black limbs with some spiky flares... Echo's bow...

'He just gave his life to save mine... Was it worth it? And fucking Alex... Stupid girl... Thinking that ' I ' killed him, ME?!... I owe that man my life, twice now, and she gets the wrong end of the stick after seeing me holding his bow. I know I shot her in the face a little while ago, bit still... Idiot... If she hadn't abandoned him, he might still be here.'

I looked back into the server room, to Crystal, in my armour that is, stood there rigid, fixated on the server in front of her, armoured hand still outstretched over it.

Ember: "Thank you, Crystal." With glove unmoving from it's hovering position, the helmet of the armour swiveled my direction. The skull carving that I had made into the top layers of the armour plating, with the golden eye sensors in the 'eye sockets' of the skull, looking directly at me. I have to say, the design still gave even me the chills... Crystal was alive, she had a soul, she had a past, a life, so she tells me. But her current form was very systematic, precise, sometimes lacking much needed emotion. She's still a computer and the things I had seen Crystal do, without my involvement, have been rather extreme. Cold. Calculated. There was no remorse or mercy to most of her actions. Yet she had never let me down, never really given me reason to doubt her. Actually, I've probably let her down more than she had me.

Crystal: "What for?"

Ember: "For... Just being there. For being my friend when I had no one else." There was no reaction, no movement, no response, nothing, for a good couple of seconds...

Crystal: "Sorry... Forgot you can't see me smiling. I wish to thank you as well then."

Ember: "For what?"

Crystal: "Keeping me switched on, giving me a second chance and believing in me when no one else did." I smiled back and returned my gaze back out the doorway as I heard a slight scuffle.

4 troops, SkyTech soldiers, rounded the same corner I did a short while earlier.

"Open fire!" one of the men shouted. I slid back around the door frame, bullets zipping past me as I pulled back the bow string... The whole bow ignited in a blue flame, not hurting me of course... A blue crystalline arrow formed on the rest, igniting in a blue flame as well as I reached full draw. My clawed fingers intentionally slipping off the string to allow the arrow fire. I know you're supposed to use a trigger release aid with a compound bow, but that was lost earlier with Echo. The crystal arrow flew, and with some assistance from my thoughts, the arrow split in 2, diving through the chests of the first 2 guys, out their backs, then straight into the 2 behind them. They fell to the floor in synchronised pairs with a clatter.

Crystal: "Do you require assistance?"

Ember: "No no, we're good." I smiled back at her again as the blue flames engulfing my bow extinguished, leaving it completely unscathed.

...

There was another explosion, much closer this time, resonating down the hall I had been intently watching down. No one had ventured this way since the 4 goons from earlier, but the explosions and resonance were getting too close for comfort, like listening to a storm rolling in, knowing it's going to hit soon...

Ember: "How are we doing Crystal?"

Crystal: "Roughly 46 percent complete, almost 12 minutes to go."

Ember: "Shit... Ok. Any idea where Alex is?"

Crystal: "Tracking... Oh no... She's past our level and made her way to the top of the labs, board room to be precise. Last seen heading to Skylen's location."

Ember: "Shit, that's only a few floors above us. We probably don't have long then."

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A crashing noise drew my attention. I made my way out into the hallway, the server room didn't have any windows, but the hallway did and I cautiously gazed out of them. The valley of hundreds of egg shaped cells that lined each side was a mess. Fires and craters where some cells once stood, lined each side, debris and large structural pieces of the cell block were scattered over the floor at the very bottom.

The noise I heard was a crumpled walkway from higher up than our position, plummeting. It crashed into half a dozen of the cells on one side of the valley, crushing them or smashing them off their perches and continued to wipe out more cells as it slid down the side of the valley until it crashed into the floor at the bottom, joining the rest of the debris.

At that moment, there was an angry scream, a boom of a female voice from afar...

"TRAITOR!!!"

I felt my own energy levels spike, the powers, acting on their own accord. They were reacting like a serpent upon hearing a sound or a vibration, snapping it's head up in excitement. Flares of red lightning rolled spiked off off of me, contacting and scorching the walls, floor and ceiling, then a wave of red energy washed over me from above. It was powerful, knocking me from my feet and smashing all the windows on this level.

Ember: "ARGHHH!" I shouted in uncertainty, covering my face from the glass showering me. Once it settled, I saw this white blur pass the opening where the windows once stood, shooting downwards, between my fingers as I peeked through them as the last of the glass settled around me. I scrambled to the edge, over the glass, to see what it was that fell past the window.

It was Alex... That mainly white armour, with accents of black covering her half human-half Dragon form was unmistakable.

A momentary burst of her plasma jets propelled her faster towards the bottom of the valley hundreds of meters below. 'What was she doing?!'

Then I realised, in her grasp, she held something, an egg?, though no normal looking egg, it was larger, maybe a bit smaller than a football. They looked dark green, with bits of orange, maybe - hard to tell as she rocketed away. She was chasing 2 more eggs, falling through the air in front of her, just like the one she was holding. Another pulse of her plasma jets, she just about grabbed the second one, before she crashed into a roll on the floor. The third egg, smashing silently into a bloody mess, about 10 meters away from her, unheard over this vast distance separating us and over the other noises in the base.

Ember: "Oh noo..."

Crystal: "I got what I could but that pulse fried the servers. Are you ok? What's going on?" She asked, kneeling beside me to try and help me up, but I refused...

Ember: "I've got a bad feeling about this..." Alex, got to her knees, even from this distance, I could see her analysing the bloody mess over herself... The eggs she had caught, didn't survive the crash landing either... She looked between looking down at herself and looking at the goopy bloody mess of the third egg a couple of times before I heard this heart wrenching...

"NOOO!!!" Echo up the valley. Alex punched the floor in front of her, the hardened floor around the impact shattered like wafer. After a few moments, she got to her feet, her helmeted head looked up in this direction and Alex started to glow. Like an actual aura of red surrounded her.

Ember: "Uh-oh... We gotta go. Now! Take the bow!..." Crystal leant her back towards me and I clipped the bow back to it as I rushed to my feet, "...let me in, let me in, let me in!" The front of my armour couldn't open quick enough. I heard the snarling roar of plasma jets as I stepped back into my armour and it sealed shut around me, trapping me in darkness until the HUD came on revealing the outside world. Just quick enough to see Alex, burning like a red comet, towards us!

Ember: "Shit!" Crystal used our plasma jets, bolting us sideways down the hall before I had processed what to do. Crystal could calculate things way faster than any Human could. I skidded to a halt on my side, turning back just in time to see Alex obliterate the hall and the server room where we were standing a second before. She blew through metal and concrete like it wasn't even there! Thankfully she either didn't see or was ignoring us, continuing her destructive path upstairs.

Ember: "We need to get the hell out of here! Crystal, can you find us a route?"

Crystal: "Already on it, but there's so many reports of blocked routes due to destruction or flooding, it's hard to find a safe route. Start running." I indeed got back up and started running the opposite way to Alex's last route. The sounds of energy pulses and explosions coming from above were certainly disconcerting.

Ember: "Flooding is not an issue, we just need a way out!"

Crystal: "Got a route! Take a right! Now!"

My metal clad feet screeched on the floor as I barely made the turn, clipping the adjacent corner with my side.

Crystal: "The elevators are down, power in the base is fluctuating. But theres a maintenance shaft that doubles as an emergency escape, it runs parallel to the elevator shafts, it's probably our quickest way out! Next left!" I screeched around another corner upon Crystal's instruction, only to see a collapsed hall up ahead.

Ember: "Err, Crystal?"

Crystal: "Aware of it. Our route will take us through the adjacent lab to this hallway. Next right, then the first door on your left." I slid around the corner as instructed, raced down to the door and placed my hand over the terminal.

Crystal: "Hacking.... Done." The doors slid open and I stepped inside. No sooner had I done so, the ceiling gave way in a shower of thick lumps of concrete.

It was Alex! She was pinned down by Jinx! I recognised that black, pink and blue armour! Both of them were surrounded by the red aura, it's like you could see their hatred for one another as they were tearing into each other! I thought these guys were friends?!

Alex kicked Jinx from her into the far wall, a fair distance and with enough power behind it to embed her into the concrete. Alex then full power plasma jetted into Jinx.

The thrust that Alex used just now, launched her into Jinx, ripping them both through the reinforced concrete wall on the right side of the room like it was paper... Her jets obliterated the left side of the room in that fraction of a second before she took off. Furniture, desks, work benches, cupboards, shelves, computers, analytical equipment, everything in the immediate vicinity behind Alex was just obliterated, anything else was blown out sideways, blasted by a sonic boom powerful enough to blow me back out into the hall and crash into the wall behind me as well.

Crystal: "Alex is going to tear this place apart! We need to get out of here!"

Ember: "Argh... I'm trying!" I grunted, getting back to my feet and running back into the lab. I wasn't far scurrying over the rubble when there was another explosion of concrete from behind, knocking and pinning me to the floor.

Ember: "Argh!..." I twisted myself at an awkward angle to try and remove the humongous slab of concrete off of me, but it wasn't budging, "...I can't move it, we're stuck!"

I became distracted though, in my line of vision, past the slab, was Jinx, pinning Alex down on her front, in the rubble, with her foot on her back. One hand was yanking Alex's head back, 

Alex: "JINX! STOP! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! THIS ISN'T YOU! FIGHT HER!" The other hand plunged down into Alex's back, right between her wings. There was a bang and a distressed sound of metal upon impact and Alex screamed in agony. I watched as Jinx twisted her hand to and throw in Alex's back, Alex thrashed in an attempt to resist the attack, even throwing red flares of energy out. But they were of no use, the flares of energy pitifully wilted away before they even had a chance to do anything.

A blood-curdling crunch of bone sounded, Alex fell silent and still, the only time she moved was in a full body spasm in reaction to Jinx wretching at Alex's back. Finally, Alex fell limp as Jinx pulled out a stone, some sort of gem, which glowed red and purple. Jinx clutched it in her hand, standing back from Alex's motionless form, the room shook violently as swirls of the energy to flew around and enveloped the Jinx. I had seen enough, I needed to get out of here! I put every effort into moving the slab, even trying to use my jets to pull myself free, but it barely moved.

Then the slab raised almost of it's own accord, it wasn't me that lifted it, meaning it could only be one person... That's when I looked around. There stood Jinx, waves of energy circling around the room and Jinx being the epicenter. She spoke a voice of dual tone, a voice hidden behind Jinx's own, one word, spoken with such hate...

Jinx: "YOU!"

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