I Am Aqueous

I Am Aqueous - Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The next day I returned to the Body Headquarters and destroyed everything. After I came back I told Dr. Ried I found nothing useful. He gave me an ugly look and told me to occupy myself for a day or two before we left to our next target. Those days went by quickly, fortunately. I was having fun running around and helping out the occasional person. This was how I wanted to live, but I knew I shouldn’t get too used to it.
We finally left four days after we arrived and we were heading to Hawaii. We got there and we repeated ourselves. We stuck around, and then I destroyed information, waited a few days and then headed for the next facility, somewhere else in the world. Many things were strange, because Dr. Ried had said that he needed me to be stealthy, but I had only ever run into mercenaries was when I killed Charles. The places were always deserted and the very little information I actually bothered to read didn’t seem to have what he was looking for. But still, all the while, Dr. Ried was seeing his “ally” and ironically, he was paying less attention or caring less and less about what information I brought back to him. Even though my information were lies and extremely vague and no where near specific enough to help him, he actually wasn’t caring that much. It was as if he knew everything I was telling him or he much more important things to worry about.
A month or so had passed and it was November now. We were flying in the helicopter and Dr. Ried said something that really excited me. He announced, “Ozzy. You’ve been loyal and doing as I’ve asked. I appreciate this. Despite the lack of information the labs I’ve been sending you to have; my goal to learn how you were made is not lost.”
I asked, “What do you mean?”
He explained, “This ally I have, has been giving me locations of these bases though black information networks. I actually didn’t know this information. So I apologize, I’ve been sending you into risky situations on rumors.”
I didn’t say anything, but at that time I realized that Dr. Ried must not have been the all mighty and invincible man I thought he was. He was taking guesses and begging others for help and using every random clue he could get his hands on. He was actually not smart at all. He was a desperate, psychotic, old man. I commented, “Thanks for the confession.”
He didn’t understand what I was talking about, but he continued, “It seems that most of our efforts were in vain. Because we’ve found an extremely secret facility which had been working a few years after your capture. The place has been deserted, however, it’s fully functional and many time larger than the one’s you’ve been in.”
I asked, “So what is it? Body or Soul?”
Dr. Ried jumped up and down in his chair, “It seems to be both. They said that ex-Project Sol scientists had gathered as much information as they could from every facility and brought it to this one massive laboratory.”
I stamped my foot on the ground, “Some one beat us to it! They beat us by about 20 years!”
Dr. Ried, “I’m afraid so. We’ve been on a wild goose chase this whole time.”
I yelled, “Damn.” Inside though I was quite happy that Dr. Ried was getting all stressed out. Unfortunately though, he seemed very happy to have found this one facility and that wasn’t good for me. I added, “So what am going to do?”
His face got serious. He said, “The bad thing is that as of a few days ago, no one knew about this place, but now, every scientist new or ex-Project Sol, every military group national or terrorist and soon everybody in the journalism industry will know of it. We may not see eye to eye, but I’m sure you can agree that everything must go!”
I agreed whole heartedly. “Yes. We can’t let them get in our way.”
He appreciated my enthusiasm, “Alright. It’s an under the sea bed. The only way to get there is from an oilrig outside of New York. Before we go there, I need to stop in New York and talk to my ally for the coordinates.”
“Alright.”
I wanted to kill some time by talking to Gun, but I really didn’t want to talk to someone I hated that much. Sometimes I wondered who my enemy really was. Dr. Ried was occasionally nice to me and we sometimes saw eye to eye and I was going on a free trip around the world. If he wasn’t so mental to revive Project Sol I might have called him a friend. Then reoccurred to me why I don’t want the Project to revive. Gun, when looking at all the roots and long term goals was the problem. I wanted to stop the project so there could never be an army of Guns. Dr. Ried was just stubborn, a dreamer and ignorant, but it was Gun who was truly evil. I realized then, that even though Dr. Ried have me extra base in order to never let Gun control, my mission will never be over until I kill Gun.
After flying from Houston, Texas, we landed in New York after a few hours. I was instructed to roam around the harbor and/or swim a little. Dr. Ried left for the city and got to look at all the huge freightliners. Tankers with the last of the world’s oils, sold off at 20 dollars a liter, clothing and decorations, exotic foods and other things from the left side of the other half of the world. I walked casually and looked at the people. “They may not be the happiest right now, but they don’t need to die.” I repeated to myself. That was my mission.
I decided to take Dr. Ried’s suggestion and try to swim. He did say that the facility was under the seabed and knowing the stealthy entrance I would have to make, I would need to swim to the bottom of the Atlantic. I dove into the water. As soon as I did I remembered the feeling of being in water. Instead of using air to help shape or extend my body, I could use the water, which felt much more compatible, less resistant and stronger. I could fill my entire liquid with lots of water bubbles and I would not experience the difficulty of holding my shape like I would with air. Unfortunately, despite how easy it felt I couldn’t make one giant tentacle and break apart a huge freighter. Water was easier and lighter in water, but heavier, much heavier in air. This worked the same with air in water too.
Since I was pretty much invisible, because I was mixed so much, I tried to swim deeper. I found that the technique I had mastered about making a bridge or a path for my liquid to move worked the same here. Like if I were to latch a tentacle on a distant object I could make my liquid flow to the tip of the tentacle many times faster than if I ran to it. I’ve done this technique many times before and here was no different. The only difference was that I didn’t latch onto anything I could just travel to different sections of my liquid as I would if I just happened to latch to something. Once I traveled to a spot, my liquid would mix a little with the water and I could travel further. So I was actually latching onto water bubbles and pulling myself towards it, which didn’t seem that much different to swimming. The great thing was that I could do this swimming, diffusion process really fast. I was much faster than a fish or a dolphin.
I swam for a while longer and then heard Dr. Ried through the radio, “Aqueous, Ozzy, get to the front of the harbor. Now.”
I heard him loud and clear and said, “Ok.” I diffused up to the surface and hopped out of the water. I sprinted across the docks and through the harbor. Not too many people saw me, so there wasn’t any screaming. I saw Dr. Ried at the front and I waited for his instructions when I got there. He told me to follow him, so I did. Even though everyone now was looking, blankly or screaming, Dr. Ried walked on, uncaring and I followed nervously.
We boarded a giant freighter and we set off for the oilrig, which was supposed to be a two our ride. Dr. Ried explained that I would have to dive off the ship and swim to the ocean floor. He explained that the rig hasn’t been functional for many years, because the oil well ran dry. The tanker was only there to deliver supplies for its dismantling. He finally explained that I would have to get in through an exhaust pipe. I understood and I waited for my cue.
The hours we slow in the bottom decks, but we eventually got there. Dr. Ried was with me and when we stopped, he explained, “You have to go by yourself. I will meet you there in while. I need to access the secret elevator on this rig. You also need to kill every mercenary or scientist down there. Like I said, everybody knows about this place now, we can’t have any risks.”
I jumped. I stuttered, “You’re coming too?”
He nodded, “Well of course. If every other place we’ve gone to was a waste of my time, I must see if this can impress me.”
I would have gulped, but I didn’t have a throat. I replied, “Yes, sir. I’ll be going.”
His voice called, “Don’t disappoint.”
I sprinted quickly up to the top of the tanker and with many people watching me still; I leapt into the water. I hit the water with a silent splash and I raced towards the bottom. I needed to hurry and destroy everything. I had mercenaries and scientists to fight and if what Dr. Ried was saying was right, I have a lot of information to destroy. If I were to keep his trust, then I’d have to hurry.
I was swimming fine for the first while, but then something happened that I didn’t anticipate, pressure. The deeper I went, the harder it was to go on. Soon I reached a point at where I couldn’t go on. Each time I tried to pull myself forward I was pushed back up. The pressure was squishing my molecules farther and farther away. I was straining to keep them together. The water molecules were pressing my molecules so hard, that I was starting to heat up, making me float even more. I couldn’t concentrate on doing anything, but pull myself into my normal form. The only thing that was clear was my default shape, so I turned back to normal. However, to my surprise, with my smaller size, the water pressure worked with me and pushed me downwards. I quickly slammed to the bottom of the seabed and I crunched very heavily many steps to reach this exhaust pipe. The pipe cover was grated, so I slipped right through and bashed through the valve.
I flowed through a small pipe system rather quickly and then I was shot out of the pipe and into a pool of murky water. The water wasn’t that deep; it went to my waist. The room I was in was completely closed off with half rusted metal and judging by the one door and the many pipes, I must have been in a massive tank for leaking water, a bilge. There was lots of noise, mainly from the rushing water in and out of various pipes and pumps. The rest of the noise was a combination of many small pounding noises followed by a metallic creak afterwards. It was like something rolling towards me. It was some sort of massive force coming to get me. The noises kept growing louder and louder and more frequent. They were coming from the door. The noise stopped. I stopped. The noise from the water seemed to stop. Then the silence was broken with the door exploding and a huge squad of mercenaries splashing there way in.
They all cocked their guns, some were assault rifles and some were EPPs, but they all looked like they could do damage to me. The whole group was a far distance away, but one screamed, “Aqueous. You have 15 seconds to surrender and be captured in the canister. If not, will not hesitate to open fire with ammunition effective to your chemical anatomy.”
I yelled at them, “Who are you working for? That might help my decision.”
The same man called back at me, “Our employer’s identity is not a factor. You are guilty of 312 acts of murder, 196 acts of attempted murder and numerous other violations of trespassing and traffic crimes. There is no room for negotiation. You will surrender in 10 seconds or we will open fire.”
I begged again, “Please don’t make me do this. I only hurt those who are in my way. Please don’t be in my way!”
He only responded with the number five.
I shrugged, “Oh well.”
They all fired and I dove into the water and used my technique to spread myself out. Their firing soon stopped because their thermal goggles saw my heat diffuse through out the entire water mass. In confusion they raised their weapons and looked around. Before they could react and created a huge tentacle made from water and a little of my liquid. It was quite a stressful feat, with all the heavy concentration I had to do, but I leaned a 10 meter tentacle over their heads. They fired, but since I didn’t have very much of my liquid in the tentacle, their bullets didn’t affect me. They noticed this and began to panic.
I whipped my tentacle across the group and knocked them all into the air. My tentacle splashed into the water and I felt exhausted in my head from that, but I knew I needed to keep it up. Most of the mercenaries got back up as I assumed. I felt a larger group of men, so I used my cometting technique to blast a whole bunch of water from underneath their feet. They launched into the air and most fell to the ground with broken bones.
A mercenary frantically shot his weapon into the water and I answered by creating a tentacle, grabbing his neck and holding him under the water until he drowned. A few others suffered this fate, but the ones that ran out of ammunition started kicking the water. There was only about six men left so I left the water and reformed in front of one’s face. He punched my face, but it did nothing. I punched him repeatedly in the chest with his hand still in my head and he fell in the water with broken ribs. Another man stabbed my back with a knife, so I stabbed him in the chest with my tail. Two men ran away so I launched my hands to their heads and I twisted their necks.
The last one was huddling against the wall shaking and crying. I asked him nicely after I cometted to his feet, “Who sent you?”
He quivered, “I don’t know.”
I questioned his answered, “You don’t know. You just came here by yourself?”
He shook his head and covered his face, “We just followed a scientist. He said he needed everything protected from you or he wouldn’t be able to restart some project.”
I muttered, “Project Sol.” I put my foot on his chest and clenched sharpened toes into his chest and asked, “Anything else?”
He screamed, “No! That’s all I know! Please don’t hurt me.”
I took my foot off him and shifted my liquid to put my tail to him. I explained, “I hurt who I have to. I don’t like it. Get out of here and never mention a word to anyone.”
He praised my mercy and thanked me over and over again. However, as soon as I took a few steps, I saw his heat pull out a pistol. I got angry and his betrayal, so I launched my antennae at him and stabbed his shoulders against the wall. He screamed. I grumbled, “I don’t like traitors.” I launched my tail into his face. I retracted my bloody appendages and headed towards the door. But before I got there, a man got up and shot at me, but missed. I stabbed and squashed his head with my foot and continued through the door.
The other side of the door was just as cold and creepy as the first. There was a very steep and narrow staircase that stretched down further than I could see. There were only five working lights the entire length. I raced down the stairs at super speed and crashed into the wall at super speed. I turned puddle quickly and I edged a little to my right.
The entire facility was spherical shaped. I was resting along the edge of a ring around this sphere. I was on one ring, which was one floor and there was six above me and at least fifty below me. Each ring had a railing along the edge and from what I could see, each ring had it’s own set of a hundred computers, labs or power generators. The sphere was one huge fortress. I was looking at a multi-billion dollar empire of rusty red and dirty browns and silver titanium. The center of the sphere was a gigantic column, which looked like, in a way, I giant elevator from the oil rig to hopefully not another sphere. Though the suspicious thing was, was that there were new light bulbs put into the millions of sockets.
If I were to destroy every bit of information here before Dr. Ried sees, then I would be wasting my time. For there were thousands of computers, filing cabinets, bulleting boards, chalk boards, anything that could possibly, artificially store the information of Project Sol. I would have to do something quickly. I decided to comet to the bottom floor, where I could use the elevator. Though one last thing troubled me. Were all these computers and labs for Project Sol? How black was this black project? I had an idea of what might be happening: there must be some sort of race for this monstrosity and Dr. Ried lost.
I landed on the bottom floor and I looked at this column in front of me. It was massive and at least 20 meters in diameter. The door was locked, so I smashed at it. However, it was many times thicker than I had though. So I had to stab at it for a while before I could make myself any sort of hole. I managed to make something paper thin; I’d have to leave the transmitter behind. I let it go. Dr. Ried is counting on me, but I felt that I could risk this one in order to keep his trust for the next mission.
I slid through the hole and fell for a long time down the huge elevator shaft. I landed with an explosion at the bottom. I had hit the floor, which was actually a huge platform with a few military vehicles. I stepped out into the room, which was completely dark. It was so dark, that I had trouble seeing infrared; it was so cold and damp. Thankfully I was not on the bottom floor of another sphere. I was standing in a very tall room, with perfectly blank walls and ceiling. The room was completely empty of anything. It was the opposite of blank, white paper. I continued the walk around, deeper into the darkness. It was very cold and I truly began to question the purpose of this room.
My questions were met with the answer of a low rumble. I didn’t need to turn around; I saw nothing with my eyes, but I did anyway and I saw some heat move. Back on the elevator, one of the vehicles rumbled louder and grumbled out of the elevator. I would have squinted to make sense of the strange heat. It was only slightly warmer than the rest of the room, so it was very hard to see. However, soon enough, it lit my way with a large blast of energy. It wasn’t fire; it was much, much hotter. It was almost blinding and it barely missed my head. The beam of heat hit the wall behind me and fire exploded behind me. I saw the column of heat rising and move around like something no one would ever want to face alone, the barrel of some new laser tank.
I rumbled closer and took another shot. I didn’t bother to move, because I knew that it wouldn’t hurt me. I was wrong. I felt the immense pain of my liquid boil! I screamed out every random bubble I could think of and morphed around into any random blob I could think of, just to ease the pain. The tank fired again and it hit me again. I screamed so loud that I was almost one whole air bubble. I didn’t have enough liquid to shape the air as speech; it was just one loud pop.
I went puddle, a very thin puddle. I thought it might help cool me off (ease the pain) and maybe the tank couldn’t hit me. I was wrong again. The tank then blasted a new napalm on top of my puddle and with almost the same blinding, boiling pain of its laser, I spread my liquid into hundreds of smaller puddles in order to keep cool. The tank responded again with launching hundreds of tiny, explosive missiles; each making direct hits onto each puddle. The tank continued to pummel me and I couldn’t do anything about it but pretend to scream. Whoever was driving the tank, sure was enjoying my suffering.
I was blinded, in pain and I lost all hope. I could hear Gun in the back of my mind screaming too. I couldn’t do anything; the pain was just too much to bear. If I reformed, it would napalm me and if I charged at it, fully formed, it would blast me with its cannon. I could only stay like this if I wanted to endure the least amount of pain. I was pinned down. I was being kicked around on the ground. I was being obliterated.
I began thinking; the pain had turned into thoughts. These tanks roaming the streets and torturing whomever they please. They were lucky; they wouldn’t feel the pain. They would die instantly, as if Gun were killing them. Gun could easily destroy these tanks and would continue their work in a more gruesome manner. Gun would torture everything.
Then it hit me. If Gun could destroy these tanks then of course I could. If I didn’t destroy this tank then I’d be letting Dr. Ried and Gun win. If I let this hunk of metal win, I’d let Dr. Ried win. If he won, Gun won. If they won, I would fail. I fail and so would Rachael. Failure was death and no one deserved that except two creatures. One was old and a scientist, the other was tyrannical and science. I couldn’t let them team up. Dr. Ried’s mistakes of letting me control the body, letting Gun stay down there, letting me do his missions, letting me be Aqueous, will be the death of him! He made the biggest mistake of his life!
I reformed as quickly as I could and I despite missiles, napalm and lasers blasting into me with the most advanced targeting systems to date, I dodged them all and I blasted towards the metal menace. I spearheaded right through the machine. My liquid was filled with wires, plastic computer chips and the blood of the drivers. I morphed my body facing and grabbing the back of the tank. My adrenaline became my rage and my will power. Adrenaline was pretend in my mind the whole time; it had always been rage, belief and the will to go on. My arms turned as hard as diamond and I lifted the tank in the air. I didn’t scream aloud, but Gun was covering his ears on the inside. I vaulted the tank into the far wall and it exploded with more than enough heat to blind me. The shock wave only rippled my liquid steel and I stood there for quite some time, letting my mind recollect what just happened.
My trance faded away as I heard the sound of another huge elevator platform start to go down. It was farther down the room and I hadn’t noticed it before. I leapt on it and I awaited my next challenge. The descent was slow and torturous, but I needed to cool down, so I didn’t cut through the bottom. When the platform finally stopped, I noticed that the door was shut. I sharpened my fingers, but I stopped when I saw all the lights on the door flicker and a huge clunk of the doors unlocking. The doors took longer than the elevator ride to open, but I waited patiently for my next challenge. When the doors finished opening, I hoped it was the end of my road and unfortunately that seemed to be the case. Dr. Ried and a huge hall of people wearing expensive suits, sitting in chairs watching him were right in front of me with eager faces. A spot light was shown on me and everybody looked at me with a frightening smile.