by The Eurostar and T5
The Tower of Cuccubao, Brazil:
Edulcore Cicciotto:
Call me Raptor. I have been blessed by fate with the power of flight. But that, here inside this dark tower, doesn't help a lot.
Much more useful is my sword, Ladnikia. She has changed my life.
I have been always the most ineffectual of the heroes around. At first, I was a speedster. With me was the fastest man alive, Tobias Christopher. He made me look like a turtle.
Then I gained a super-exoskeleton, able to do nearly anything. The first moment I would have used it, my son would have been killed.
Now, my life has changed. Ladnikia is raw, unstoppable power. Whoever stands in my way, gets killed. And there is no need to master swordplay. The blade fights by herself.
Just like now, when a battalion of armored Olympic track runners, aiming laser guns at me, come down the stairs.
"Kill the Eurostar!" they keep shouting. "Kill Euro! Kill Euro!" Olympic track runners? In the middle of the Amazon jungle? That doesn't make much sense.
The heads begin flying. One after another, the attackers fall. Yet, I am weak. Bloods and soul should nurture my sword and power me. Something doesn't work here, just like for Chance.
THIS CAN'T REALLY BE HAPPENING!
The Hoods' matrix. It's all a deception, a fake.
The world around us begins to dissolve...
I am strapped to a table, Drake the same on a table near me.
Chance, totally naked, is fighting with two men in lab coats. Another one is knocked down on the ground, blabbering unintelligible words about his mommy.
The two men keep throwing things like scalpels and scissors toward the Swede. But none is able to make contact with him. And by chance (by Chance), one of the scalpels ends on the straps that keep me tied.
I stand up and, without taking aim, send the scalpel into the right eye of one of the lab men. Then I jump down to the corner where Ladnikia is, take her, and as her power flows back inside me, I cut the heads of both men.
Chance looks at me seriously, but doesn't say anything. He just points his index finger to the other side of the room. On another table, very distant from where I was, there is Ameristar.
"Jackie!" I cry.
I run to her. Chance locks the door of the room, which is circular, without any windows. From what I have seen, the tower is a very tall cone, with the rooms in the center and a spiral staircase on the outside between the rooms and the external wall.
Ameristar is sleeping, or so it seems. Chance manages to free Drake, who opens his eyes and looks at us, perplexed.
While he gets back on his feet, Chance comes near Jackie. He opens one of her eyes. "She's in a coma," he explains. Then he notices blood on the back of her head. There is a small hole. Horror appears in the eyes of my friend.
"She needs medical care, NOW!" he shouts.
In the same moment, something begins booming just outside the door.
The corporal in charge of the guards responded to the alarm in the lab. Apparently some of the test subjects found in the jungle were trying to escape.
"Okay, men: position yourselves on the right and left sides of the door. I will open it and do a quick scan of the facility. Then you follow me in. Anyone not wearing a lab coat is a target!"
"Aye, aye, air!" The ten troopers were well-armed and well-trained. This had been a cushy assignment for most of them. Guard a tower in the middle of nowhere, no hostile government troops to be on the lookout for, or any terrorist organization to take down. Just guard duty. That is, until the orders came in from above to start this meta research facility.
The first to arrive had been a local weirdo family that had managed to escape at one time, but the last of them had now been caught yesterday in the company of some outsiders. They had been sedated with gas grenades, but only after a few strange misfires.
The staff wanted to take a look at these metas, and apparently the leading researcher had known one of them, a girl, who he then set up a private lab for.
For security reasons, the metas were put in virtual reality beds to assess their potential. And their equipment was taken to storage, except for the sword, which had somehow been overlooked completely by sheer chance. Now, it seemed their powers had neutralized the VR beds, and they were on the loose.
As the troopers counted down to one, suddenly a couple of stun grenades went off in the corridor, sending the troopers to the cozy darkness of unconsciousness.
Raptor took the closest man in a lab coat and screamed in his face, "Save her! Now! Or you will suffer a death that will be legendary even in Hell!"
The frightened doctor began to do his best with the equipment at hand.
Then the door blasted inward, and a young red-booted girl came charging in with guns blazing. Drake Marshall, Chance, and Raptor yelled as they took cover behind a desk.
"Crasher! Goddammit! It's us! Stop firing!" Raptor waved a white towel from behind the desk.
"Ooops. Sorry, guys. Are you all right? No one hurt?"
Drake stood up and pointed to Ameristar. "It seems someone had it in for Ameri, here." He glowered at the doctors, who recoiled in fright.
"We were only following orders. Doctor Rana was in charge and left as soon as he was finished with the specimen."
Drake was furious. "Specimen! We're talking about a girl, here. Where did this Ranja guy go?"
The doctors looked at each other, apparently quite afraid of the madman and the armed girl, who were pushing them up against the wall.
"Errrr... Rana... Doctor Rana went by helicopter just a few minutes ago to report back to his employers."
"And who are they?"
"Well... we were recruited by Doctor Rana... and the pay was... well... amazing, so we didn't ask."
Drake flung his hands up in the air. "Terrific! Now we have no way of catching that guy!"
Raptor loomed over the doctor who tried to patch her up. And Crasher came up to him.
"Oh, poor thing. What have they done to you?" She held Ameristar's hands, and tears flowed down her cheeks.
The troopers outside were slowly regaining their wits, and silently the corporal gave them orders to resume their attack on the individuals inside.
Edulcore Cicciotto:
When the armed troopers get inside, the first to fall under the fire is the doctor, who dies with a horrible scream.
The second shot that gets its target is aimed at the Gaia unit of Crasher. Sparks come from it as the young girl, swearing, takes it off her back, throwing it into the troops. The thing explodes, buying us some time.
"Chance, finish the operation! Drake, I need Drax. Crasher... what do you know of the tower?"
As the girl opens her mouth to respond, Chance stands in front of me. "Operate on her? I'm a chemist, not a doctor! How can you possibly...?!"
I stop him. "Jackie's dying. Did you never got any biological lesson in university? Aren't you able to hold a scalpel?"
"I had some basic surgery training in the army, but it--"
"--was enough! With your luck, it will be fine!" I cry. "Now, Crasher!"
"We are near the middle of the tower," says the red-booted girl. "Five levels down, six up. The rooms are in the middle, one for each level. The stairs surround them."
Just like I thought. "Have you any idea what Ameristar was looking for?"
"My dad thinks there is the map to the location of the book in this place, the map with the route of Cuccubao."
Chance and Drax (who in the meantime has exchanged places with Drake) look at me startled. "What? Jackie needs medical help now!"
"NO!" I shout. "We will not leave this place without that damn map. Ameristar's sacrifice would be meaningless if we leave like this. Crasher?"
The girl looks at me, full of hate. "My... my father would think the same," she says reluctantly.
"Okay. Drax, you have to protect Chance and Ameristar. I will find the map with Crasher."
Without looking back, I take the door, climbing over the dead bodies of the guards, followed closely by Crasher.