Experiment X

Epilogue | Final Flames

Author's note: Commander Rogan has been changed to Captain Odell to correspond with the sequel Phoenix 5.

Phase 10 | Fate Calls

Epilogue | Final Flames

There is a sudden ringing of a small, black telephone-appearing device; it’s this ringing sound that disrupts the absolute silence within the crimson embellished oval office. A pale, spindly finger presses the receiving button, and a raspy voice says, “Yes? It better be good.”

“Father,” the deep, distressed male voice emanates into the still air that smells faintly of chrysanthemums that loom near the glass arched windows, where the dusky light of the falling sun penetrates through, flooding onto the carping, giving the appearance that the dark wine-red carpet has caught afire.

“Yes, Arms Captain Odell,” Father Lius speaks with a subtle sneer. “What is it?”

“I’ve just only received word that the Experiment Complex located in the Northwestern Wilds has been completely destroyed—”

“What!?” Father Lius exclaims heatedly. “What do you mean, destroyed Captain?”

“As in nothing left, Father,” he says, and hesitantly continues, “not even the surviving Experiments, five in total now I believe. They have been taken by the Changer, who appears to be a double agent as well.”

Father Lius’s shaking white hand meets his other in a poignant, pensive temple, and his thin lips purse into a quiet snarl. “This is quite the unfortunate circumstance, Captain. As seeing the Controller and his lab Assistants are all gone, and that they’ve been given a head-start already, I see it that your mandate is urgent, and clear enough: You will see to it that you will stop them, kill the Changer, capture those Experiments, and have them deported to me, alive. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Father,” the Captain says. “It will be done.”

“It better be, or I’ll be bestowing a new promotion very soon. This conversation is over.” Father Lius clicks the end button, and his piercing hazel eyes stare straight through the white vase of chrysanthemums upon his desk; he deliberately picks up the vase and smashes it onto the floor, releasing a sound of absolute, hysterical rage: the lasting shattered image of white, delicate petals, fragmented shards of the pale vase, and staining water trapped against the darkened crimson fiery carpet below.

…

The final flames of the ruinous Experiment Complex site have been long extinguished by the plumes of dusty wind, and diffused smoke. Now the heaps of burnt, twisted, and trashed metal dully shine, coated in blackened soot, and ravaged, glistening glass. There is no sound of life here at all: the silence is otherworldly, and the air drifts of the faint clouds of smoke. These clouds hang heavily around the mountainous mounds, and through the dusky haze the flapping of bird’s wings breaks the suffocating soundlessness.

When a gust clears the haze, it can be seen it is a bluebird, its bright cheery plumage out of place in the mechanical, ominously gray wreckage; and its presence makes itself then vividly known. It’s chirping, but its perch is only momentarily, as something from below, internally awakens within the hillock of debris and rubble. There’s a strange humming in the air, as if energy of some kind is collecting, building from a gathering unseen force; the bluebird frightened, takes to the sky, flapping away in a blur of brilliant blue. Then gone.

Just as the bird has vanished, leaving the area colorless again, near where Emberly had been found lying, the smallest of glinting pebbles in a once motionless mound, begins to tremble. The trembling becomes a reverberating force, threatening to dislodge and then it—

Moves.