Heritage (Under Revision)

Chapter 35 - Ethan

“Alright, let’s see if we can get this piece of junk in the air,” Damien says, keying in a few start up sequences on the dashboard of the ship.

I take a seat in the pilot’s position next to him while everyone else straps into their seats in the back compartment of the ship. Damien looks over at me.

“Well, ready?” he asks, hovering a finger over the start button. I nod my head in a silent yes.

He presses the button and there’s a slight jump in the ship. The engine makes a gurgling sound and then stops. Damien makes a sigh in frustration and re-keys the starting sequence into the ship.

“Come on baby, start for me,” he says.

He presses the button again and the ship makes the gurgling sound once more. It continues this time and there’s finally a burst of dust that flies from the rear jets, causes them to fire up.

Damien grins and pulls up on the joystick and the ship lifts off, skyrocketing us up into the sky. We all hang on to our seats as the ship enters the atmosphere and begins to break through it. Pieces of the ship’s plating fly off and it seems as if it’ll be torn apart.

“Come on...come on...come on!” Damien yells, gritting his teeth.

I close my eyes from the pressure of gravity pulling down on us. For two minutes I feel the pressure on my chest and without warning, it ceases and I open my eyes. I see the vastness of space before me and ships going to full-on war with each other.

“Alright, go to minimal thrusts and move slowly through the outskirts of the battle. We can’t risk it,” I say to Damien. He nods his head and decreases the thruster power on the ship and we gently float through space, watching the battle.

“Jesus, they’re tearing each other apart out there! All this over the Poseidon?” Damien asks.

“The Poseidon was the best ship in the fleet. I designed a lot of it by myself, that thing had weaponry on it that would rip everything the enemy had to throw to pieces. They knew there was nothing that could beat it. That’s why they used Rin’Gal,” I respond.

“Hm...I will admit, that was a cunning move by them. But I guess leave it to Rin’Gal to take on a job like that. You never told me why you saved him by the way,” Damien says, giving me a questioning look.

“Because we’re enemies with him. Not monsters. If we killed him, we’d fit right into what they expect from us. I’m telling you; this’ll help in the long run. Rin’Gal has a lot of honor and prestige on Argalia because of his warrior status. Maybe he can tell this story and show that we aren’t what they think we are,” I explain. Damien just smirks and shakes his head.

“Always thinking ahead Ethan.”

“Yeah, that’s me bro,” I reply.

A whole hour passes before we make it to the end of the battlefield we need to be.

“Alright Damien, we’re far enough, hit the Hyperdrive,” I say.

“Got it,” he responds. He presses a few more sequences into the ship and grabs a lever that’s placed in between us.

Damien takes a deep breath and pushes the lever forward. It looks as if the stars are pulling toward us as the Hyperdrive engages. As we thrust forward, the area around us turns a bright white with streaks of blue and red in it. The warp lasts for around thirty minutes before finally coming to a stop, bringing us to a dark sight.

“Never thought this place would have to meet my eyes again,” I say in a low tone.

“At least we’re here for a good reason though,” Damien responds.

Elena comes into the cabin and looks out herself. I can see her eyes well up with tears as memories flood her mind.

We drift to the point of the wormhole and slow the ship to a stop. Damien and I walk to the compartment of the device and begin suiting up in the suits that are provided on the ship.

“I’m going with you, Dad,” Leon says to me, grabbing a suit of his own.

“The hell you are! You don’t wanna see what’s in there. Your mother isn’t even going,” I respond to him.

“I want to see, Dad. I want to see what you went through, I want to see these things first hand,” Leon says, insisting.

I stare at him for a sec and then glance over to Damien. He shrugs his shoulders at me, giving a signal just to allow Leon to go. I roll my eyes and wave my hand to Leon, allowing him to go.

We finish putting on our suits and then clip on the arm brace that allows us to stay in movement while inside the wormhole. I walk to the back door and turn around.

“Alright, none of us has done this before, so we won’t know what happens. Be prepared for anything, we’re walking into one of the most unknown forces in space, got it?” I ask. Leon and Damien nod their heads at me.

“Good. Anika, start it up,” I order.

Anika turns to the console and begins typing in various key-codes. She presses enter and there’s dead silence for a moment. The ship then begins to shake heavily. We lose our footing and latch on to something. I grab the door and stare out of the small window and I see a field project out into space from the ship.

Next, I see a large tear rip into the fabric of space. I stare in awe as the wormhole is forced open, projecting a symphony of colors in a swirling whirlpool of beauty and destruction.

The shaking ceases and I stand up, turning around.

“Anika, Stella, Elena. Get into the next compartment. We’re departing,” I say.

All three of them go into the passenger compartment and seal the door. I open the door and feel the oxygen be sucked out into space. I motion with my head for Leon and Damien to exit.

Damien grabs Leon’s arm and jumps out of the ship, keeping Leon close to him. Before exiting myself, I turn around and wave to the women, then hop out of the door and close it.

I push myself off the ship and catch up with Damien, then I engage the thrusters on my boots so that I can keep pace with Damien and Leon.

As we start to enter the wormhole, I feel my heart pound in my chest and my breathing picks up. I close my eyes as I feel my body pass through the void into the wormhole and when I open my eyes, I see the remnants of an old familiar structure.

“Holy shit Ethan, do you see this? It’s like the station is completely halted in time,” Damien says, awestruck.

The station floats in a void absence of time. It looks as if the station is just beginning to tear apart; that must’ve been the point where it was taken into the wormhole.

We draw closer to the station, somewhat reluctantly, and step in the ship hangar where Dante’s frozen body lies. We step into the darkness cautiously, expecting the worst to come from the station.

Damien and I draw our pistols and flashlights and begin searching the station. Leon begins to drift from the group, looking around on his own.

“Leon, stay close, this place is nothing to be played with. I mean it, no games, you hear me?” I say.

“Yeah, Dad, I got it,” Leon responds with an attitude-filled tone.

I turn back to Damien and catch up with him. I reach his position where he is aiming his flashlight to the floor and standing still as stone. I look down and see that he’s staring at one of the creatures that inhabited the station before its demise. He shakes his head with a hard expression.

“I still can’t bear to look at these things, eighteen years after or not,” he says.

“I know Damien. We all have bad memories from here, let’s just find Dante and get out of here,” I respond.

He nods his head and continues walking. I wave my flashlight from wall to wall, searching for any sign of our lost friend.

“I got something,” Damien says, running over to a wall. I follow and shine my flashlight in the same direction as Damien’s. All I can do is grin as I see the prize, we worked so hard to obtain. I drop down to one knee and examine my brother in arms, Dante.

“He hasn’t aged a day,” I say.

“Well, I think being in a wormhole does that to ya,” Damien responds.

“He’s all torn to hell, nothing that looks like a scratch though. How in the hell did he slip away from them without so much as a scratch?” I ask out in general.

“Must have slinked his way out after he pulled his grenade pins,” Damien says, trying to answer my question.

“Apparently, he didn’t get far enough, his vest is all torn to hell. It’s a good thing he was wearing it otherwise the shrapnel would’ve gotten him. He’s got some burns and I’m gonna assume he’s got some broken bones from the impact on the wall.”

“You gonna play Medical Examiner all day, or are we gonna take him?” Damien asks impatiently.

“In this current state, he won’t survive being re-animated. I don’t know if touching will do that,” I answer. Damien rolls his eyes and touches Dante’s shoulder.

“See? It’s fine, now let’s go,” he says.

I look at him with an annoyed expression and roll my eyes at his Damien’s careless act as I reach for Dante’s arm to lift him up.

“Gahhh!!!” Leon’s voice lets out with a scream in the distance and I snap my head back, looking behind me.

“Stay here with Dante,” I say to Damien as I run off towards Leon.

When I reach Leon’s position, I find him lying on ground, shaking, grunting, and clenching his head. My eyes then meet a sight I had hope I’d never see again. The little girl’s corpse lies there, frozen in time, her black eyes piercing into the darkness.

I walk to her corpse and end her miserable existence one last time with a crushing blow from my foot to her skull. Her head shatters and resumes its frozen state in the wormhole.

“Leon! Leon, are you alright!?” I ask frantically, grabbing his shoulders and lifting him up.

He looks up at me and I see his eyes are shaded a deep, glowing purple. The inner rings of his pupils are colored with a hint of yellow, projecting out in streaks through the rest of the pupil.

Leon grabs his head once more and yells in excruciating pain. The pain seems to be so great that it causes him to lose consciousness. The event brings me to a final, sudden conclusion...

Infection.

I lift Leon on my shoulders and rush back to Damien.

“Grab Dante, we’re leaving...now!” I say to Damien.

“What’s going on!?” Damien asks me.

“I’ll tell you when we get back, we don’t have time, now let’s go!” I yell as I head to the hangar opening.

Damien grabs Dante and we jump from the station simultaneously. We engage our thrusters and return to the ship in just a matter of minutes.

We burst through the door and Damien immediately puts Dante on a table, straightening his timeless body out into a laying position. I place Leon into a chair and secure the belts into place over him.

“Rin’Gal, take my pistol and make sure you keep Leon at bay, don’t ask, just do it!” I say in a rush, handing Rin’Gal my weapon.

Elena bursts through the door with Anika and Stella a second later.

“What’s going on Ethan?! Why did you tell Rin’Gal to do that?” she asks me, shocked.

“It all makes sense now Elena, he’s infected. He’s had it his whole life, and it’s grown as he has. It’s mutated, become a part of him. It’s completely different because he grew up with it.”

“What?! No, no that can’t be Ethan, please tell me it’s not true!” Elena says to me as tears start to roll down her face.

“Infection? What infection?” Stella asks through her own upset voice.

“Stella, you’ve read everything about me, including the infection that I had while on the Zeus, take a wild guess,” I answer. Tears start to pour from Stella’s face as well, and she takes a seat, completely stupefied as if she were the one who had the infection.

“What are we gonna do, Ethan?” Elena asks.

“Look, we know how to treat it, we just need to get the means. For now, we just have to keep him restrained and we need to focus on matters at hand. We need to give Dante some medical attention before re-animating him. This means that we can’t use the device on him until that’s done. We better get started right away, I don’t know how much time Leon has so let’s get to it,” I say, explaining. No one says a word; they just begin working as fast and efficiently as they can. I fear that Leon doesn’t have much time.

Just hold on son...hold on.