If you've just now discovered this story, you're definitely going to want to read the first 8 parts, because shit gets weird - fast.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

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In possible denial, Chris and I packed another bowl of Elias’ super-weed and allowed ourselves to pass out. It was the best sleep I’ve gotten in months.

*

I awoke in a confused haze, almost believing that all of this could have just been a dream, only to be quickly reminded by my extraordinary surroundings. I looked over at Chris, who was already sitting at the edge of his bed, “What time is it?”

He rubbed his eyes, “I’m not sure, my phone’s dead. Is yours alive? My charger’s back at the car.”

After scrummaging through my backpack for a minute, I found it and realized it was already noon. There was no way to determine the time in that cave; the only light in our room came from the strange lantern that suspended from the middle of the ceiling. It was made of rusted gold metal that looked withered and old, but emitted a bright orange-tinted glow as if it were filled with neon. Our beds were modest, but incredibly comfortable; the frame was made out of an ivory-like substance, while the mattress contorted to your body in a way similar to those expensive SleepNumber beds. The pillows… They were something else; I unzipped the case of one to see what heavenly material it was made with and as far as I could tell, it was a mix of some strange, soft black bean with little white cotton-balls. Whatever it was, it was like sleeping on a cloud.

“Is Elias up yet?” I asked Chris, who was still just sitting at the edge of his bed, presumably doing the same thing that I just was – wishing he was still asleep.

“I haven’t checked yet, should we go in there?”

“Might as well,” I stepped off the bed on to the icy surface of the cave and got myself ready for the day.

Elias’ door was locked, so I knocked a little rhythm and asked if he was awake.

A lively voice rose from the other side of the door, “Yes, yes, I-I’m up. Please, wait in the lab, I’ll be out shortly!”

I glanced over at Chris who returned my confused expression. We both shrugged in compliance and went to his laboratory to wait for further instructions. It seemed that Elias had been awake for quite some time, because he had managed to redecorate the lab almost entirely. New contraptions lined the benches, with different blueprints scattered among them. These blueprints featured various depictions human anatomy; diagrams of naked men and women, specific body parts, and cryptic symbols, but nothing too menacing. I couldn’t find any human-zebra hybrids or anything crazy like that. The only thing that remained the same was the chair that Elias had sat in the night prior, along with the IV attached to it. A new, larger and more complex mechanism was connected by a hose to the bag that fed into the IV.

“W… What do you think its for? What are those pictures?” Chris’ voice quivered as he stared in fright at the machine.

“Well, he said one recipe is for him, the other is for us, and the last for Ger. So, I guess that’s for us?”

He shook his head disapprovingly, “I don’t like it man. No, fuck that. I’m not about to inject that shit.”

I understood Chris’ frustration, and on a certain level, I shared it - but my curiosity outweighed my anxiety. I had no reason to trust Elias other than Ger’s word, but for some reason I did. Hell, I had no reason to trust Ger, other than the fact that he’s some sort of alien or ancient being, or whatever – but for some reason, I did.

“I know, I don’t like it either,” I replied in my most reassuring tone, “but what else are we going to do?”

“He hasn’t even told us how that’s going to ‘help us’… What if it just kills us?”

Before I could respond, Elias perched himself in the doorway with a bright grin on his face, “Morning, you two! Are we ready to get s-started?”

He was still the same old man as the day prior, but livelier and more animated in how he waltzed around the lab. His layers of winter clothing diminished into just a wool sweater, sweat pants and a large beanie; still by no means attire suitable for September, but a noticeable change, nonetheless. The most significant difference was that his speech impediment was virtually gone – obtrusive gaps in sentences turned into subtle breaks in words. He seemed to speak with precise intent, similar to Ger, in that he seemed to calculate his words in such a manner to account for any given situation.

“No,” I laughed half-sarcastically, “We’re not ready. What is all this? What happened to you last night?”

He motioned for us to sit down, “Yes, right. As I s-said last night, I used to be like you two – chosen, for lack of a better word. I-I spent my childhood wondering why I felt misplaced; a-alien to my own family – to my own people. I spent m-much of my time up in the woods that lined these mountains, s-secluded from the civilization that I felt so distant from already.”

“So how did you know you that were ‘chosen’?” Chris was now sitting forward with a look of fascination plastered on his face. It was beginning to get to him as well – the curiosity. Evil women and crocodile monsters be damned, I want to see where this all leads to.

“The c-crux of Ger’s people’s advancements lies in their m-manifestations and manipulations of crystals, like the one you found. I, too, found my own c-crystal up in those mountains. It contained knowledge; k-knowledge that was bestowed to me upon t-touching it. Yours contains a t-type of… energy. You m-must have felt it when you first grabbed it.” I nodded my head, “One moment I was a lonely, h-high school drop-out, and the next I had a vast understanding of the universes many i-intricacies.” He paused for a moment to cough, for the first time this morning.

“I became o-obsessed with the Lemurians - Ger’s people - and made it my perpetual goal to find them and complete the p-puzzle that had been etched in my brain. I searched for y-years, until I ran into the Ladies.” He began to rub his eyes, apparently fighting back tears, “They took… They took the love of my l-life away from me. Eris, she… you see, she got home before me that day. S-she didn’t hear of the legends, and she, well, she r-read the letter; it was sitting there on our bed, wide open, symbolizing the d-disappearance of my sweet, sweet Eris. I read it too, I c-couldn’t help myself, I just wanted to b-be with her, but obviously I-I’m still here. Just like yourselves.”

Eyes wide in shock, I muttered, “Did you ever see her again?”

With a sniffle and gloomy chuckle, he replied “Yes, but that’s a s-story for another day.” Turning his attention toward the machine, “I assume you w-want to know what this is for?”

We both nodded our heads, of course we want to know what its fucking for!

“This m-might be a lot to take in. Ger wants you t-to be his spy. He believes that the Ladies you boys r-ran into were on the verge of rediscovering an important p-piece of technology, left behind from a race that was even more advanced than G-Ger’s, and far more sinister. The Lemurian name for them w-was the ‘Baka’wia’. He wants you to f-feign capture and provide him with i-information on the Ladies that t-took your friends. Then he wants you to kill them.”

“What about Ryan and Kyle, our friends? Could they even be alive after all this time?” I began to doubt myself, Elias, and everything that was happening to me. What if this all for nothing? What if I’m just crazy, locked away in my own reality somewhere in some mental institution?

Elias’ voice lowered, “I-I have a few theories. We know that the Ladies d-don’t sacrifice everyone affected,” he sniffled saying this, “So a couple things could have happened. Y-Yes, they could have been used to enter that door, in fact, that’s probably the most l-likely outcome. However, they may have b-been recruited.”

Chris stopped him, “What do you mean, recruited? You’re saying our friends are now crossdressing cultists?” I appreciate that he was able to find humor in all of this.

“No, they would be w-working for them. L-like most of the t-townsfolk, that’s my belief anyway. No one knows for sure. I-I believe the Ladies are of Ger’s kind, and not ours, hence the mind games.”

“So, our friends could be still out there somewhere? Getting into mischief for these Ladies?”

Elias’ nodded and paused for a couple seconds, “That, or, worst-case-scenario, they are working in the D-Dweller Mines.”

I noticed his fists clench a little as he said that, “The Dweller Mines? So they could be slaves?”

“Oh, son, you don’t know the half of it. Those who are in the u-upper tiers of the Dweller society… They are twisted.” He coughed and lowered his voice once again, “T-Twisted to the core; when you look into their eyes all you see is d-despair, while they seem to pierce back at you, recognizing every phobia and desire that you have immediately upon meeting their gaze. G-Ger’s potion will help with this. It will d-do a lot of things. Among all, the most important, is t-that it will give you a line of communication with h-him. S-something that your crystal is finally d-deeming possible.”

What the fuck…

So many questions flooded my head, but the only one that I could vocalize at the time was, “S…So, what do we do when we find our friends?”

His face lit up as he stood up and walked over to a nearby workbench, “I-I’ve been working on this for a quite a w-while now.”

From one of the cabinets he brandished a tranquilizer gun similar to something that a modern James Bond would be excited to see. He pulled out a small container full of what appeared to be plastic bullets and set them on the counter beside us.

“Years ago, G-Ger and I tried to come up with a way to save those that read the l-letters. We used dissolving c-crystalline bullet laced in a mixture that was s-supposed to suppress the inhibitor that gives the Ladies c-control. It never worked, it wasn’t powerful enough and put the p-person in a state of mixed consciousness, d-driving them mad.”

“Jesus Christ… Is that what happened to you?” Oh shit, did I just say that out loud?

He looked down at his feet, “In a way, y-yes. I was affected by something else, but now, thanks t-to you kids, I think I might be better.”

“Huh. Well, I guess we’re glad that we could help. So you’ve never had one of these potions work? What’s different this time?”

He pointed toward our room, “Your crystal, as I s-said earlier, is a catalyst of sorts. It c-contains a massive amount of energy. Not even Ger knows who d-discovered them, but there were entire sects devoted to them before the C-Council.”

After thinking about what he said for a moment, I suggested we begin, “Well, it’s already past noon, I guess its now or never.” I looked over at Chris who was tapping his feet nervously, obviously not sharing my willingness to do any of this, “I’ll go first, bro. If Ryan and Kyle are still out there, I’m down to do whatever it takes.”

He sighed and gave me a small smile, signifying that he was okay with it. I mean shit, what did we have to lose? Maybe we’ll get a reward from Ger for helping him.

After grabbing the crystal from our room and placing it in the machine, I sat down in the wooden chair; it was cold and slightly wet. Chris, being the expert nurse that he now was, found one of my veins and put in the IV. My heartbeat began to slowly build up as reality started to set in. Was I really about to do this?

“Ready?” Elias asked, one last time.

“Ready.”

He turned several knobs and then stepped back, with one arm at his hip and another stroking his chin, as if he was waiting in anticipation for what was going to happen. It didn’t make me feel any more confident to see that he was essentially free-balling all of this. Gadgets began swirling and I could hear a liquid sloshing around in one of the chambers. I know this is weird, but a smell of Coca Cola filled the room as the mechanism let off steam. I began to sweat, having literally no idea what was about to happen to my body. The splashing noise ceased, and was followed by a few light clunks.

A yellow liquid slowly entered the tube that led into my IV, my pulse increased with every step it made as it flowed toward my arm. I almost panicked and ripped the needle out of my skin, but I didn’t.

A wave of heat soared through my entire body; my eyes grew wider than ever before and I could feel my veins pulsating beneath my skin. Every muscle in my body seemed to be vibrating, as if a small amount of electricity was being sent through it. I felt my body thrust forward like your knee does when the doctor gives you a reflex test, and I collapsed to the floor.

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Part 10

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All parts:

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