I flexed my fingers to work out some of the stiffness and put my hand on one of the stunrods on my belt. I stepped through the gate to a storage room with dirty white walls and low lighting. There was nobody in the vicinity, but I could hear echoing footsteps getting closer from afar. With stiff legs, I quietly walked up to the open entrance, pulled free the stunrod and planted my back against the wall out of sight. The sound of someone approaching grew louder and soon, a female Resonar stepped in. Without hesitation, I took a big step towards her and pushed the stunrod into her lower back. Smoke, electricity, shock pulse, screeching sound and a blinding light blasted out into the poor women. I became dazed for a few seconds too. When I shook it off I saw the poor thing lying on the floor completely K.O. I glanced down at the rod in my hand with a fearful expression. I couldn’t help thinking that it might have been an overkill to use something that was made to scare away bloodthirsty beasts on normal people. After checking her for breathing and pulse I become relieved. Thankfully she seemed fine except the unconscious part.

[Please tell me she’s a clone!] Even though she wasn’t dead or seriously hurt by what I gathered, it was still a jarring thought that I might have hurt a real, innocent person.

[Check under her jaw. There should be a circle with a dot in the middle.]

I checked and the sign was there. [Does this mean she’s a clone?]

[Yes. Don’t waste too much time here. They might have already realized that you are intending to do something horrible on this ship.]

[Right!]

I stood up and rushed to a holoscreen on a nearby wall. I checked the size of the crew before anything else. According to the ship’s open logs, there were only three people on this ship, which gave me a huge relief since I only brought four stunrods with me. Next, I checked on the layout of the ship but didn’t spend too much time on it. Genna saved it the second I saw it. The last thing I did was checking the camera in the control room. To my absolute luck, the human guy was calmly sitting in his seat seemingly unaware of what happened here.

[Lead me to the control room please!] I asked Genna.

[Take a few deep breaths Aium. Your heart rate is too high.]

She was right. My heart was thumping in my chest as my limbs were slightly shaking. I took a moment and breathed in and out a few times to calm my body as much as possible. Other than a few drunken scuffles from my youthful days I never really had any serious physical confrontation with a person. The adrenaline in my body was reaching record levels.

[Good enough. Turn left and go straight!]

When I arrived at the door to the control room I took a few more calming breaths. Sprinting here didn’t help my increased oxygen intake. I took a fresh stunrod into my hand and walked in.

“Did you put the guy into the room? I don’t want any more problems for this trip,” the human captain said annoyedly without turning back.

I walked closer behind him.

“Rala?” he asked and as he turned back I lunged at him and pushed the stunrod into his chest. Before it activated I saw the sudden realization in the guy’s eyes and the shift as it turned into terror.

After I pulled his unconscious body out of the chair I tried to gather more information from the captain’s station, but I didn’t have permission. Without any better idea, I had to try the storage areas blindly and as fast as possible. The STP didn’t fuck around and they would figure out the situation in no time.

I rushed back and checked several areas one after another. As I opened up one of the smaller ones and stepped in I saw a small ostentatious box floating between two slowly spinning rhomboid plates. The curved carvings all over its deep red body were particularly striking especially with the waved protrusions around the edges. I stepped closer, but from the corner next to the door someone shouted at me.

“Don’t move!” came the harsh voice.

I slowly turned around and saw a Resonar male pointing a strange looking device towards me.

[No! No! NO! That’s a heat gun!] shrieked Genna in my mind.

[WHAT?! You said there are no weapons other than in the military!]

[There shouldn’t be! There can’t be! This is impossible!]

[FUCK!] I screamed inside.

-I have Advanced Dexterity. Maybe if I move quickly I can use the stunrod on him!- I thought.

*POP*

Almost at the same time as I heard the noise in my ears, Genna warned me, [Don’t try to use your stunrod on him! He has some kind of personal shield!]

Before I could think about what just happened and what the familiar noise could mean the guy spoke again.

“Who are you?! What are you doing here?!” he asked loudly.

“I’m just the crew from the other ship that suffered damage. Your captain invited me up because the safe route became unstable. There was an STP warning,” I said as I slowly backed away further into the room while holding up my hands.

The guy walked after me out of the corner, carefully keeping the distance between us. “You’re lying! I can feel it. You obviously wanted that box. You came here specifically and you even have malicious feeling towards me.”

[Shit! Shit! Shit! I’m fucked!] I cursed inside as I slowly backed up even more.

“Your anger betrays you further! Pull that helmet off! NOW!” he shouted as he kept the distance between us.

[Please do as he says! He has a gun for a reason! He’s definitely willing to hurt you or even worse,] said Genna with a quivering voice.

After a moment of hesitation, I reached up and took it off as he asked.

"Now drop it!"

I let it go and it fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

“Now tell me who you are? Who sent you?!”

“I...” I gritted my teeth in frustration. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

-Should I just try to tackle him?- I considered.

*POP*

[What the fuck is this noise in my ear again?!]

[What are you tal-]

“ANSWER ME!” the Resonar yelled. “What did you do to the captain and the girl? Why are they not answering.”

[Aium! Please do as he says! You told me you’ll listen to me next time! This is the time for that! Just tell him the truth!]

I felt hopeless and thought that this time Genna was absolutely right. I couldn’t come up with anything. I tried to dart my eyes around the room looking for something… anything. The doors were still open and when my eyes landed on the empty white hallway a terrible memory came to my mind.

“Who sent me? I have no idea,” I bluffed to buy a little time.

I stared into the yellow eyes of the man and tried my hardest to imagine how it would feel to tackle him and smash his face into the wall. To take this BioEnhancement and escape flawlessly. To listen to Genna’s ramblings about how many things I did wrong. To watch documentaries on a couch while Genna pestered me to talk about pointless things from Earth. I ran through these pictures several times in my mind as fast as I could and forced a smile on my face. The guy’s brows furrowed just barely. I saw the tiny response and it gave me a surge of real hope! I thought that this might just work.

“Wha-” tried the guy but I interrupted him.

“Have you ever seen an angry Severin?” I asked him quietly with a mad grin on my face as I shifted my eyes from his and took a long glance down the hallway. The memory of SalenKarr rushing towards me on the ship was still vivid in my mind and I focused on it as hard as possible. When I looked back to the guy’s face it twisted up and he quickly snapped his head around to look into the hallway with his gun.

I didn’t hesitate and pushed myself toward the guy with every muscle in my body. I lifted up my right fist and smashed it into his jaw as hard as I could. With a resounding thud and crack a barely visible shield pulsed around the area the guy took the hit and he staggered back a step. Immediately, piercing pain rushed up through my hand.

[SHIELD! TACKLE HIM!] screamed Genna.

My sudden attack took the guy by surprise and as he shifted back the gun towards me I ignored my right hand and after two steps I barreled into his thin frame with my shoulder.

The room echoed with a loud, sizzling blast and two heavy thuds. Then there was silence.

I blacked out for a few moments because when we landed, my head smashed into the guy’s jaw. The first thing I could feel after coming back to my senses was a searing pain at the side of my left thigh with the scent of burnt meat. I lightly shook my head which made the dizziness even worse. I blinked a few times and saw that I was laying on the Resonar who was blankly staring down at me. I froze for several seconds but then realized that he wasn’t moving anymore. I looked down and the gun was still in his limp hand. My eyes shifted to the burnt wound on the side of my thigh and then followed the shot’s direction to the floor a few steps behind us. The melted hole in the thick metal floor terrified me. If that shot hit me directly I would have been long gone. I slowly got up and took in the situation. The Resonar was laying by the door, his neck at a weird angle as it was pushed against the side of the door’s frame.

[Did I just…] With trembling hands I reached down to check on him, but there was no pulse and he wasn’t breathing anymore.

[How… I just wanted to get the gun from him! You said he had a shield!]

[I… It must have been a cheap thing, it didn’t consider the wall as a threat and didn’t dissipate the force from it. You are twice his weight, you just crushed him against the wall,] she said in a grave tone.

“Please tell me he’s a clone!” I pleaded as I hurriedly checked under his jaw. Fortunately, the sign was there.

“How… How did he have a gun if he was a clone? Aren’t clones usually controlled by A.I.? What the fuck is going on?” I said hoarsely as I struggled not to puke.

[I told you it was impossible!]

“I WAS SHOT! HOW IS THIS STILL IMPOSSIBLE TO YOU?!” I screamed.

[I… I have no idea.]

I grabbed my right hand with a hiss. At least two of my fingers broke when I punched him and there was the bonus wound on my leg.

[Grab that shit and get off of this ship as soon as possible! We’ll figure things out, but you absolutely can’t spend any more time here!]

I limped up to the box floating in the middle of the room and grabbed it alongside with my discarded helmet. Before leaving I took another glance at the dead Resonar clone as my stomach twisted into a tight knot. I knew it was a clone, but I still broke something’s neck that looked like a person. I shuffled through the hallways towards my own ship. At one point Genna stopped me to pick up a first aid kit from a wall. It was a good idea since both my hand and thigh required some treatment.

When I reached the captain’s chair on my ship I punched in a moon’s location in one of the closeby systems and just entered Phase without giving the slightest fuck about the STP. I wanted to get the hell out of there before someone came sniffing around.

I raggedly sighed and said, [Before you start… I know I fucked up. Really badly... I should have listened to you, I shouldn’t have done this.] I massaged the bridge of my nose with my working hand.

[I agree with you, and I told you so many times. Still… That guy shouldn’t have had a gun. I don’t understand this. How did he get it? It wasn’t some homemade copy. It was a proper military grade heat gun.]

[I don’t really care about that, but what I care about is that he saw my face. The cameras on the ship might have recorded me in that room too.]

[That is a huge problem for sure.]

I pulled out a painkiller shot from the first aid and injected it. The pain receded almost immediately. I took a deep sigh and said, “Let’s see if it was worth it.”

I pulled the fancy box up from the ground to my lap. I hissed a little as it pushed down on the burnt-out wound on my leg so I positioned it on the other one. I looked for a lock or something, but there was nothing.

“I expected at least some kind of super-mega secure lock on this. I was prepared to get a Phase-cutter and carve out what’s inside,” I said with a frown. "Remind me to throw out the box on the way."

I lifted up the lid and inside I saw a huge tube with countless tiny “1”s printed on it with some sparkling gold paint. Beside it, there was a sizable, square box with a round strap at the bottom.

“Genna, would you take the honor to tell me what have I risked my life for?”

[It’s the Avatar!] she said so quietly that it was barely more than a whisper. [As you know, the level 1 BioEnhancements are different from the rest because they follow certain themes and include a pack of complementary changes. This marvel is a cocktail of a dozen different BioEnhancements. Some aren’t even sold. The highest level technologies combined to perfection. This will make you tougher, bigger, more resilient, but most importantly... a lot stronger. The Avatar represents the quintessence of physical strength.]

“Huh...”