Seconds(3)
“So… are you a Xeno or something?”
Mason blinked at the question, head bobbing up as he still was contained in his bindings. He remembered the man who spoke; they had previously been one of the first to jump up to Jenna’s defence during his little hostage situation.
The milky-eyed, bald man had taken to staying in his jail room ever since Mason gained a small amount of trust from his words. If anything, the ex-hero assumed that Nathan was there in case his directions didn’t go where they wanted. Of course, with his directions only being ‘more to the left’ or ‘go back’, Mason figured that Nathan’s patience was pretty high.
The man had already spent so much time in the jail room that Mason and he had grown to simple, small conversation. Something that Mason internally enjoyed to distract him from whenever he shared Lumen’s senses.
“Nathan! That’s rude!” Jenna interrupted Mason before he could answer, playfully slapping the bald man. “Don’t use those derogatory terms like that.”
“I’m just asking if he’s mixed or not. It’s not like I asked if he was secretly another race or something.” The man said, pausing to turn towards the locked up Mason. “You’re not a Gorgeon or someone under the Primary Kings, right?”
“I’m not.” Mason said, noting the names down for later.
Jenna smiled, pointing her chin up as if she held all the answers. “Yeah! He’s completely Hume, too! No metal in him to even be considered close to either of those guys!”
“Alright, alright…” Nathan sighed, hands raised in surrender. “Just wondering about someone who can take a charged shock from your implant and still stay conscious. Figured he had to be half something.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” Mason asked, feigning being of mixed blood.
“Not really, most people got at least some blood from other human races out there. I just figured you’d be something like that. There’s supposed to be a planet with a massive lightning storm that goes around it, and the humans there along with their descendants have a pretty good resistance to electricity.”
Mason took in Nathan’s words, mind completely blank about some of the things they considered commonplace. He had next to no idea on what they were talking about half the time, but there were some consistent things he was picking up.
From what he mainly heard, humans were a majority in this universe. However, as he listened and conversed, he wasn’t sure if his definition of human quite matched theirs. Sometimes they spoke as if a human having an extra set of arms or a tail and horns was commonplace. It really began to dawn on him that those that they considered a different race from humans were something completely out there.
Mason honestly didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing at the moment.
Most importantly though, he learned that humans had amassed a truly extravagant empire in the plotted universe. It was enough to the point that Mason wondered how long it took to create such a thing. As his captors seemed to enjoy complaining about said empire, all Mason had on the topic was a biased view.
Still, he enjoyed learning about new things. Perhaps it was something he only noticed in his travels, but the ex-hero found new places to be fascinating. From an elven kingdom built in the middle of an expansive forest to now a human empire that stretched across the stars. He probably would have enjoyed the talks more if it was for the situation Lumen was in.
A pit of restlessness and anger built up in Mason’s stomach, boiling away any enjoyment he might have had. His bonds had been loosened somewhat, and his captors chose to accompany him for almost the entire day for his vague directions. However, his builtup goodwill was beginning to eat away at his patience.
“Excuse me,” he started, cutting into Nathan and Jenna talking about something he didn’t care for at the moment. “Are we close to the destination?”
Nathan pursed his lips, his face the epitome of calm and collected. It was Jenna’s face that Mason paid more attention to; her expressions were normally the least controlled of the two of them.
And his attention paid off. The woman’s eyes failed to meet his as she turned her shoulders to the bald man in the room, looking for his help in the situation. If that was telling enough, Mason caught her casting him a few looks that could have meant anything. But, his time as a hero taught him enough to know when someone was hiding the fact that they were suspicious about something.
“If you need the directions again, I can try to search again.” Mason pushed, hoping that he would tip the kind Jenna to spilling whatever she might be thinking.
However, it was Nathan that stepped in between him and Jenna. He sighed before his neck popped, a crisp crack echoing in the silent room. “I guess we can’t stall much longer… Okay, I’m just going to ask straight up, were you sent by the Yellow King to watch over us?”
Mason paused, not long enough to give anymore suspicion, but enough to realize that maybe their attempts to talk with him were probes to find information. “I’m not.”
“Then, are you affiliated with the Human Empire?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“No, I’m not.” Mason frowned, finding the situation to be a little too much opposed to his wishes of finding Lumen faster. “And before you ask if I’m with any other random empire, coalition, or whatever, the answer is ‘No’. I’m just trying to get back my s… things.”
Whether realizing something in that answer, Nathan relented to his interrogation before turning back to Jenna and nodding. Taking a moment to straighten her shoulders, Jenna turned to face the ex-hero with the first frown he had seen from her in the few days they had talked.
“I’m not saying I don’t trust you, but I want to know how you have been guiding us to an unregistered Empire Outpost.”
“Would you believe me if I said I had a magical connection to my friend being held hostage there?”
The frown ebbed away from Jenna’s face for a second, but she schooled her features after huffing to the side. When she turned back to him, he could clearly see that the woman was trying not to pout in a way he had only seen children do.
“I’m being serious here, Mason…” she scowled at Nathan who let out a small chuckle behind her. “Don’t encourage him, too! We need those supplies, but attracting Empire attention is the last thing we need... Those kids deserve better than what we’re giving.”
Nathan sighed as his hand patted the irate woman on the shoulder. “We’re already wanted after the stunt we pulled on Beta-Kalfos, Jenna. So what if we bring someone with a neural implant onto the crew as well; it’s not like they need another reason to chase us down.”
The interaction between the two seemed good for the ex-hero, but there were a couple things he noticed that instantly set his instincts on overdrive. Firstly, it was their series of questions that made him suspect that this crew had a fairly untrustworthy employer. Secondly, the fact that Lumen was being held on a supposedly Empire Outpost was something that they had probably known for awhile, considering the fact that they had only directly questioned him now. Lastly, and most importantly, the name Beta-Kalfos was something he recognized almost immediately.
He’d be an idiot to not pick up the queues until now. Especially when the only planet he knew by name was Beta-Kalfos; a supposed dead planet considering the fact that it was CF plagued, whatever that meant anyways. Either way, Mason nearly groaned aloud as he picked up all the pieces to build a semi-stable rendition of what was happening.
Leave it to him to immediately get put in the path of some important quest as soon as he is dragged to another world…
His eyes narrowed as he realized he was being railroaded onto this somehow. However, the ex-hero had enough of random quests that came out of nowhere. He cleared his throat, dragging the attention of the two two arguing his viability in whatever important agenda they had.
“Honestly, I don’t mind whatever you all plan to do. As long as you drop me off at the Outpost, I can run a distraction for the rest of you to go and take what you need.”
Jenna bit her lip, debating his words. “Mason… I know we started off on the wrong leg here, but we really need all the help we can get. We’ve talked to you for three days, and I can say you don’t seem as bad as Quincy tries to make you out to be.” She chuckled as if the fact that Quincy hated his guts was just some teenage tantrum. “You see, we really need to get that food and any supplies there. Our backer, err… they could be our employer as well, but uh, they think they have a cure for the CF plague. They even figured out how kids aren’t easily consumed by the plague like older infected; something that even the leading people against the plague are unaware of! I don’t know your background or what you might need to do, but please! We need your help… if not for the trillions we could save, then for the kids we-”
“Stop.” Mason’s tone was heavy, like an executioner’s blade. “I- I know the weight you’re carrying.”
His words were slow, as if he were afraid to miss a single one. They got caught in his throat, and nearly choked him to say. However, he couldn’t keep throwing himself into righteous cause for faceless masses over and over again. He was a hero, but he was also human.
“If you know then-”
“But I can’t help you.” It nearly tore him to pieces as he watched the always peppy and bright Jenna slump at his words. “I’m… really sorry. I don’t care if its the Empire’s homeworld or whatever, I need to get in there. They have one of the last things my wife left for me there, and I need to get it back. The best I can do is be a distraction.”
“Well, what happens after you get it? You’d need to escape, so you can help us along the way, right?”
Nathan sighed, stepping up to calm down the frantic woman. “Jenna, I’ve seen his look before. He looks like someone who doesn’t want to get involved here. He’s probably got things he needs to do as well, and joining us on our own mission with small odds of success is not a wise thing for anyone to do. He can always take a small cruiser from the Outpost, if he wants to escape anyways.”
“Are you really, really not going to help us?” Jenna stared up at him, knowing full well that if they forced him, he’d probably do what they asked so long as he got what he needed.
Mason bit back his desire to respond to the cry for help in front of him. This wasn’t his war to fight. “No, I’ll do my part, but I want to leave.”
His answer was finally the words that spurred a reaction. The woman listlessly drifted over to the wall opposite from him, her hand extending to touch a small, glass panel with light shining through it. She pressed her hand against the glass, and soft blue light flashed for a second before she spoke.
“Authorization: Jenna Warren. Full Release.”
Like magic, or completely separate from magic now that Mason thought about it, the metal around his hands and feet liquified, melting off his limbs before being sucked back into the series of metal arms sticking out of the wall. He softly hit the ground as he kneaded his unused limbs to get the blood flowing once again.
“Here. I held onto these, but since you’re free, you should hold onto them now.” Jenna’s hand reached down to slide two white bands into Mason’s plan.
Very carefully, Mason curled his hand into a fist, afraid he might drop the rings at any second. “Thank yo-”
The hiss of air caught his attention as he watched Jenna pass him one last look before walking out of his little jail room before disappearing behind the sliding doors. Nathan walked over and helped the ex-hero up to his feet, taking a moment to gaze over Mason’s arms and legs.
“You feeling alright? We weren’t sure if the animal holding cell worked as well on a human, so if you’re feeling a bit weird, tell me.”
Mason blinked, looking into the man’s glazed eyes. “You can’t seriously be telling me that this is the animal holding cell?”
“Well,” there was a smirk on the man’s face. “You certainly smell the part. Speaking of, how about the first place I show you is the showers? Then, we can begin planning on how to get your things back, okay?”
Feeling a bit tired at all the talks, Mason wanted to just get to Lumen and have this entire ordeal be done with. Sadly, hygiene came before almost everything.
Still, he tried to look at the bright side in all this: after eight years in a world without easily accessible hot water, he could finally shower again.