Gar came to an abrupt stop in the Arboretum. He turned around twice, frantically searching. “EB? Director?”
“Gar, help!” A familiar, yet impossible voice beckoned him.
Gar turned slowly toward that sound. “Chase?”
“Please, help! I’m lost!”
“CHASE!” He ran through the trees and jumped into short glides over flower patches.
“HELP ME!” This time it was Quark calling out.
“Quark!” Gar ran faster, dodging trees and jumping over jutting roots. The forest grew deeper and deeper, it was much larger than he recalled for this station.
“PLEASE, I’M LOST!” Chase called again.
Gar called their names over and over as he ran, the trees becoming so dense he couldn’t see the glass windows or the stars outside. Bright lights flashed, cutting through the deep shadows. The sounds of weapons fire echoed between the thick trunks.
“CHASE, QUARK! WHERE ARE YOU?!” He shoved small trees over, dodged larger trees, and wanted to get airborne so he could fly over this forest and find his friends faster, but he couldn’t.
“GAR, KRAMPUS IS GOING TO KILL ME!” Chase yelled, and then let out a blood-curdling scream.
“CHASE! CHASE!”
Quark screamed, “HELP! I DON’T HAVE MY POWERS! HELP, GAR!”
Gargoyle stumbled over a root and went head first into a tree. He hit the ground and spent a moment gathering his senses. The sounds of weapons fire grew louder and the voices of his friends no longer called his name. They screamed in terror.
Gar let out a hard growl and suddenly gripped the trunk of a tree and began a quick climb, his fingers digging hard into the bark as he pulled himself up. Launching into the air, he threw his wings out and flew in a glide as fast as he could toward the flashing lights and screaming voices.
The treeline ended near a large body of water. Two people lay on the sands of the beach with blood spilling out from the bodies. Gar dropped out of the sky with a hard slam and rushed to his friends. Quark was oozing a blue blood from a hole in his side, his eyes were open and still. Chase was face down in the sand, burn marks all over her body and her own knives protruding from her back.
Gar fell to his knees, trembling as he had never before. He reached up with both hands and screamed in both pain and fury. In the distance, a deep voice cackled in glee.
Chromatic walked across a patch of open grass in the arboretum. His guitar was out and ready for battle. He scanned the area with his eyes, using his powers to search for signs of life.
“Director? Hey! Nova! Where the hell are ya?”
There wasn’t any sound.
He said, “Hey guys, I think...guys?” He turned around, “Doc...dweeb? Hey, where’d ya go?” He marched off, looking around the flower beds and into the trees. “THIS AIN’T FUNNY! I’m not yer babysitter! HEY!”
That deep laughter echoed behind him. He turned with a shot and scanned the area again. This was a voice he knew, it was the same laughter that came from the laboratory when it went nuts. “Alright, you stinking pile of crap. I ain’t one to mess with. Show yerself, or I’ll blast the hell out of this whole damn place and watch you squirm.”
That voice taunted him. “Oh, really? How can a tone-deaf polka reject like you even hope to play that instrument?”
Chromatic’s face turned a deep red. “Oh, yer gonna get it!” He strummed his guitar with all of his strength. To his horror, it sounded just like any electric being played without power. He tried again and again, but the only sounds he got was a defunct electric guitar and a laughing menace.
Suddenly the world went gray, he couldn’t see any colors at all. He blinked and attempted to use his ability to spread colored light, but it didn’t work. Chromatic yelled, “HEY! MY POWERS!” This only led him to his worst discovery. He couldn’t hear his own voice. Yelling and slapping his ears, he realized he had gone deaf.
Chaz Hamilton slowly walked around these amazing gardens. “Nice place. But where’s Nova? I really need to get to that interview.” No one answered him. “Um, hello? Anyone with me here?” He turned and realized that the two people he came in here with were gone. “Aw, crud. Sure, leave the normal human alone on the big space station, real funny.”
Suddenly the arboretum went dark. For a moment, Chaz wondered if this was a program to simulate night for the plants. However, it seemed odd that it would activate so quickly. He stopped and scribbled a few notes about this when he realized that there was light again. It wasn’t the daylight that was formerly simulated in here, but an orange glow.
“And what have we here?” A deep, mocking voice said.
Chaz looked up, that orange glow lighting up his face. “Wha...what...what are you?”
The light grew brighter, and the laughter began. It started as a chortle, but quickly grew so loud, and so deep that it rattled the windows and shook the ground.
“Okay, I’m get’n outta here!” Chaz turned and fled the arboretum the same way he came in. He skidded into the dining hall and ran for the nearest door marked, ‘elevator’.
“Going so soon?” That mocking voice was right behind him.
Chaz turned to see where this thing was when he turned a corner and ran into a wall. He hit the ground hard and then the whole station tilted. Before he could get to his feet, he was sliding down the corridor, running into trash cans and other stationary objects. Harder and harder the floor tilted until he was nearly in a freefall. His fall came to a sudden end when he landed inside a domed window. He was now standing in what appeared to be nothing but glass, looking down at the planet far, far below him.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god. I hate heights, and this is the worst.”
That voice responded, “You don’t say. BWAHAHAHAHA!”
Chaz watched small cracks forming in the glass. He dug his fingers into the metal floor plating behind him, hoping to get off this window, but it was too late. The window exploded, and he was shoved out of the station by a harsh blast of decompressed air.
Gar wanted to cry, much as he wished to when he held his dead father. He heard that laughing voice and the rage erupted out of him. He took off at great speed over the water’s surface, the wake from his flight splitting the water behind him. The orange glow on his face grew brighter as he approached the menace responsible for the deaths of his friends.
As he flew he lost sensation in his legs, then his arms. His wings took more and more work to beat against the air. All at once his body became immobile and his flight quickly descended. With an enormous splash, his flight ended. He could still see, but that was all. The dark waters enveloped him. That orange glow above the surface dimmed as he sank. Deeper and deeper he fell until his stone-hard body slammed into the floor of this lake.
Gar knew these waters, the sands and rocks, the debris from ships and other man-made objects. This wasn’t the waters of the arboretum, these were the waters near Italy, the place they buried him for centuries. Unable to do anything, Gar was left with the one feeling he knew the deepest, fear.
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