Bites Back #2 by Landry Q. Walker

Author:Landry Q. Walker [Walker, Landry Q.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2018-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Elara woke up, several hours later, strapped to a medical table. The room was brightly lit, with a scanner of some kind on a retractable arm. Elara could see a massive wall-size monitor across the room, despite being restrained.

“Wurgh,” she said.

A robot floated over—one Elara hadn’t seen before. It was painted with a large medical symbol on either side and had several metal arms coming out of its back. These were outfitted with an array of rather frightening-looking medical tools that Elara decided not to focus on. One arm particularly caught Elara’s attention—mainly because it looked fairly silly. It was a folding mechanical arm with a gloved hand at the end. Each fingertip had a different glowing light attached.

A sudden flash of blue light announced the holographic arrival of the ship’s computer. “Ah!” came the uncomfortably familiar voice of the headmistress. “You are awake! How wonderful! We have so many questions for you! V3-ED01, please begin the interrogation.”

“Your mind is strong,” the robot said. “But no carbon-based life-form can resist the hypnotherapy the way you have. How do you do this?”

The robot moved closer. Elara glanced and saw the many medical attachments. Buzzing saws and long needles and all kinds of nastiness. She held her breath, steeling herself for what was to come. Luckily, the robot chose the silly light-up glove attachment. Elara breathed a massive sigh of relief.

The robot tapped Elara’s arm with one glowing fingertip. She felt her arm tingle where it made contact. In the back of her mind she heard a familiar faint rhythmic pounding—like something buried deep that she couldn’t quite reach.

“Your cellular structure is unique,” continued V3-ED01. “There is an unfamiliar energy signature within your DNA. Why is this?”

Elara felt another fingertip. This time it felt like a freezing spike was driving through her mind. “AAH!” she felt herself cry out, despite her determination not to speak.

The robot reached down below the table and picked up an object. Elara’s heart sank when she saw it was the chrono-hopper.

“This device is familiar,” the robot continued. “This device is not of this time. How did you come into the possession of this?”

Elara tried to fight back the words, but they were starting to slip out. “It . . . it was . . . given to me.”

“By who?” she was asked, feeling the touch of another fingertip. “You will answer,” the robotic voice continued.

Elara could barely think. Her headache was back. She was about to break, she could feel it. She still didn’t understand why she was immune to the mind control, but whatever gave her immunity, she was just about at her limit.

The screens across the room flickered to life, every inch of them filled with a sinister masked face. “As you can see,” the robot said, turning to address the Watchman, “the subject has proven usually resilient to the Hypnoticon Broadcaster, and none of the standard psychotropic compounds have any meaningful effect. It’s as if her cellular structure was metabolizing the compounds as soon as they entered her bloodstream.

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