Chapter 160: 162: Dragons Under The Mountain

At last, Yr'Arl was going to get some medical attention. 

With a flick of doctor Kreen's robotic wrist, a heavy clunk came from beneath the floor of the room that we had been in previously.

With a whirring sound and a set of vibrations that rattled the windows, the floor parted and a small camp bed rose out of the ground on a shuddering platform. 

"Come, come, place him on the bed," doctor Kreen said, "My machines will see what is wrong with him, and do what they can to repair his damaged components." 

The guy was speaking like Yr'Arl was some sort of robot that needed spare parts. 

"Uh, there shouldn't be any need for… new components," I said, "For a start, he's completely biological and for a second this is just a case of dehydration with some probable heat stroke thrown in for good measure." 

The mad doctor looked at me with surprise written across his face, "With symptoms like that it would sound as if you were up on the surface," He said as the predator trotted over to the bed and waited for me to pick Yr'Arl up. 

"I mean, they practically were," Dan said as I hoisted the feline alien onto the bed that the room had provided, "Got inside just before the starstorm hit, had to bake in the access tunnel for a while so I could circumnavigate the security protocols. The alien probably wouldn't even be alive at this point if I didn't get the hatch open when I did." 

"His name is Yr'Arl," I said, after making sure he was comfortable on his back, and still breathing, "Now please, doctor, can you do something to treat him?" 

The doctor blinked at me, "My medibots are already scanning this Yr'Arl," He said, "Though I have not encountered his kind before so I cannot tell you if I will be completely accurate in ascertaining his complete physiology. Now, go go, sit with Dan, do not distract me in my work." 

He shoed the two of us away with his human hand. 

<Bit of an eccentric one this guy, isn't he,>BB said in my mind, and I had to agree. 

In any other circumstance, I would be loath to trust such an individual, but he'd taken us in off the street and protected us from the officer that had come to sniff us out with whatever the dranes were, so I had a degree of grudging respect for him as weird as he may have been. 

"Come on, Jacob," Dan said, gesturing for me to follow him. 

He led me back through the room at the back, through a doorway and up a flight of stairs to what I could only assume was the living room of the doctor's building. 

A ratty old sofa was against one wall with a holoscreen on the other, though since it was turned off I could only tell it was there due to the holo emitters on either side of the wall. At the centre of the room was an equally ratty coffee table, it looked like it had been used for longer than I had been alive in either of the universes I had lived in. 

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It wasn't exactly what I had been expecting from a doctor living in a high tech city under a mountain. 

In fact, nothing was what I had expected from a high tech city living under a mountain in a star system with three stars. A city advanced enough to stave off both the heat and gravity from a situation like that surely had to be incredibly advanced. 

Yet here the people of the city were living in abject squalor, especially in comparison to the Guard that I had just left. 

Something was fishy. Something didn't add up.

"Dan, you're gonna need to start explaining what's up with this planet, this city," I said, sitting down on the couch as lightly as I could. I didn't want to break the thing. 

"Yeah, it's pretty messed up, right?" The other otherworlder said, shaking his head.

"Messed up is definitely the word I would use, it feels like there's something incredibly wrong with this city," I said, "You've got a giant megacity that seems like it could go on forever, but there's just no one outside. The streets are filthy. What's up with that?" 

Dan sighed and ran a hand through his Bieber-like hair. 

"The council in charge of the city, they're remnants of a bygone age, but they've got the entire backing of the Enforcers on their side. Means that we can't realy progress if you get what I mean," He explained. 

"When you say a bygone age, what do you mean?" I asked, hoping to pry some more information out of the man. 

"Well, when the Human race first arrived at this system they were apparently very bloodthirsty, creatures of conquest and tribalism, very different from the world that we came from," He said, though I wasn't so sure if I agreed with his assertion that it was entirely different from our home universe. 

"So what, they conquered the planet and they've been ruling it with an iron fist ever since?" I asked, the nod I got was all the confirmation I needed. 

I had a duty to get Yr'Arl and I back to Actaeon safely. I had a duty to learn more about my powers, so that I could control them and take on the Mordekash. But there was something about this situation that I just couldn't ignore. 

Feudal lords ruling over billions of people like dragons sitting under their mountains. It couldn't be allowed to go on. Yr'Arl was sick anyway, and it wasn't like we had any coin to purchase a new ship to take us back where we came from, or on to the temple world that Yr'Arl had told me about. 

"Damn it, I have so much to do already… but I think I'm going to help you," I said with a sigh. 

How did I always get myself into these situations?

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