Empyrean Iris Story Collection

For Science Pt. 2

Sunny looked on in helpless horror as her human friends slumped to the ground and grew still. There was nothing she could do, the window remained unbroken by her attack, and no matter how hard she hit it, or what she hit it with, it would not break. Krill, likewise stood staring on helpless unable to help. She wasn't sure which one of them suffered more. Her for her emotional attachment to them or him because, as a doctor, he knew what might just happen to their bodies.

Between the two of them it couldn't have been worse. She turned from the window ran out the door, pushing past Connn, who floated like a useless sack of garbage staring off into space with nothing but a vacant expression.

She made it to the place where the intake room had been locked down jamming her fingers under the door and began to pull. If she pulled hard enough, than maybe...

"STOP!"

She didn't stop.

"I said STOP."

A body dropped in front of her between her in the door obscuring her vision and stopping her progress. She reacted suddenly and violently jolting upwards and grabbing the distraction about the throat. Ribbons of white billowed around her as she moved.

Conn almost died right there and then. Had she pushed him any harder against the wal his entire body would have shattered. But you couldn't tell just by looking at him such a thing had taken place. He stared at her defiantly, his unnervingly human face pulled into an expression of annoyance rather than fear. Slim fingers raised towards his head, and his hands began moving quickly translating his words into speech that she could hear, "You will only get them Killed. If you run in there now they surely have cameras and sensors. We are lucky if they have not noticed us yet."

"I won't let them die." She snarled

"Oh yes, and getting yourself killed heroically while you attempt to save them and fail is even better." The sarcasm was thick, layered on like butter. She was reminded how human Conn was compared to the rest of them. It almost made her jealous at times, and she wondered if that may have been one of the reasons she couldn't stand the smug creature.

But he continued speaking, "I can hear them, you're humans. They are not dead yet, but we must remember that, somehow they managed to defeat two teams of humans on the insides and two teams of humans on the outside. They have all our men, what do YOU think you can do? If you storm in now they WILL die."

"But Ada-"

"Is still alive." The straborn signed exaggeratedly, "And dreaming cute fluffy dreams about bunnies." He mocked. With one hand he reached out and pushed her away. As weak as he was it wouldn't have done anything if she had been trying to resist him, but she stepped off and ran back onto the observation deck, leaving Conn floating behind her massaging his throat.

Krill was still there waiting and watching in wide eyed horror as doors opened up in the sides of the room leaving six cavernous black spaces from which nightmarish things poured.

Large, blocky, black robots gilded their way onto the floor. They were tall slabs of black with blocky mechanical arms resembling no species that she knew of, simply wide rectangles with blinking lights and a set of arms. She would assume they had originally been used as autonomous guards when the prison was still under friendly hands.

But now, they were busy picking up the fallen humans, taking their weapons and stripping them of some of their gear. Helmets rolled across the floor and vests were sliced off to be piled against one corner. The robot that held Adam turned in a wide circle and then proffered the body in a random direction as if it was asking someone's opinion on the specimen it had collected.