Page 62 of Guardian's Legacy
"Oh, come on, I still have an audience to satisfy!" Nock protested.
"Turn it off," Raasla reiterated.
With a pout, Nock adjusted his comm. "Do you have any idea how many credits you're costing me?"
"Do you have any idea how lucky you are to still be alive?" Raasla countered.
In horror, I stared at the Xenomorph robot that had made its way onto Luph's ship.
"I don’t understand," I mumbled, using my comm to get it back under control. "I shut it down."
"It? You? Explain!" Raasla demanded.
Just then, Vader and Maul appeared and, without my input or orders, began attacking the Xenomorph.
"What in the frygging Abyss?" Tharaax stared, fascinated, at the bots battling.
"Alice, shut them down." Xyrek grabbed my arm.
"I'm trying. You holding me doesn't help." I pulled my arm back. "There!"
All three bots stopped.
All eyes turned to me.
"Oops."
XYREK
For good measure,the bots were locked into a storage area, where they wouldn't be able to do much damage should they power back on. Alice assured us that she would check their on and off switches as soon as we were done talking. As it turned out, that took all night, and we still weren’t done.
"You guys go get some sleep. I'll make a quick scouting trip to see how many Ohrurs we're dealing with," Raasla offered.
"You're just as tired as the rest of us. Take a break. We can scout later," Tharaax said.
"You're welcome to stay with us. We have enough quarters available here," Noodar offered. "You two can have your own, like the others. They brought all their things aboard, and their ships are tethered close by. You're welcome to do the same."
"Thank you." It sounded reasonable for all of us to be together. I looked at Alice, but she was in a deep conversation with Zoe and Nova, laughing at something one of them had said. “That would be nice,” I agreed.
The night hadn’t yielded much new information, which was a surprise to me, but we were able to figure out some of the missing pieces. All of them had foggy memories of training, but my insights helped them realize how it had actually worked. Sloane pieced even more together. She explained that the Ohrurs had most likely kept us in a sort of slumber between training sessions to overrule our instincts not to fight. Over time, she said, the Ohrurs applied so much brainwashing that we became different people. What we still didn't know was, different from what? Were we clones? Lab-grown? Or both?
"They suppressed all your memories and encoded your brains to make it start hurting whenever you tried to remember. It's actually quite brilliant. Over time, you trained yourselvesnotto remember."
Sloane was right. It was brilliant, from the Ohrur's perspective. But when it happened to you, you didn't agree with it that much. She explained further, "Thankfully, their hold wears off after a period of years. Twenty to thirty seems to be the magic number."
That, too, made sense. Noodar and I were the oldest working Space Guardians in the group, and he and I seemed to remember the most. It might also explain why and how I had gone through such an onslaught of memories. The dam holding them back had already been breaking, little by little. It had been only a matter of time before it failed completely. I wondered if it had been like this for the other Space Guardians my new friends told me about—the ones who had turned to the Ohrurs in confusion and had been terminated for it.
One thing still didn’t make sense: I still looked younger than Zaarek. Well, that and a lot of other things. But it was progress.
I was also astonished to learn that the others had three Ohrurs in their possession. It explained why Possedion and Moddekdum had vanished.
"Okay, but what I don't get is, let's say the boys were in their twenties when they were killed." Zoe's voice hitched slightly at the last word. It didn't sit right with any of us. "So then they were cloned or whatever, and then they worked for the Ohrurs for twenty to thirty years. That would mean every man here would be in his forties or fifties."
My mind was slow to figure out what she was driving at, but when it did, it was anahamoment.
"You don't look forty or fifty, Zaarek." I looked at my brother, still searching his eyes for the love that had once been there, but there was nothing—raising my anger anew against the Ohrurs. They had taken our mates, memories, and even our brothers and sisters from us.
"I don't," he scrutinized me, "but you… maybe…" The small smirk my brother used to wear when he was teasing me was still there, and it lightened my heart. He might have forgotten me, but I could tell that he still loved me—even if that love lay dormant right now.
