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Shattered

Chapter II

Krystal was sitting down on a cold plastic composite chair inside a spartan room. The room was fairly large with silvery metal sheeted walls. It had a one-way mirror peering into the adjacent interrogation chamber where the mysterious tall armored stranger resided. Fox and the other team members were in the room with her alongside General Pepper. Since nothing had happened yet she began to rerun the incident in her mind.

She thought back to when he had put a knife to her throat. It felt like she was going to die so she had cried. He had surprisingly let her go, this was one of the things that kept bothering her. Then the most distressing thing was his attempted suicide. She had never in her life seen someone try to kill themselves. Even though she had not seen his face she could feel the sadness, anger, and despair radiating off of him. She was filled with questions that buzzed around in her mind like a swarm of katinian hornets. Where did he come from? Why did he let her go? Was he even a lylatian? And perhaps the most important question, what was that she saw in his mind?

Her mental debate was ended when she saw Bill Grey, a bull dog and long time friend of Fox, walk into the interrogation room. She observed as he started his 'interview'.

"Who are you?" Bill demanded taking a seat across from the intimidating armored figure.

The strange armored man who had been relieved of any visible weapons tore his gaze off of the table he sat in front of and looked unsettlingly through his red glowing helmet slits at Bill. "Alexander Von Jäger." The man replied in a deep voice. They took note of his foreign name.

"Alright then Alexander," Bill said "How did you get here and why?"

The man (now Alexander) took a minute to respond. Presumably to arrange his thoughts. "I don't know." He answered finally.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Bill wondered.

"I should be dead." Alexander emotionlessly replied.

This startled Bill and the other viewers, especially Krystal.

"Why?"

"I....rather not say." He refused, his concealing helmet hiding any telling facial expression he could have made.

Sensing that he can't get a read on his captive Bill had an idea. "Take of your helmet." He ordered.

"I would like to keep it on." Alexander mumbled quietly.

"I wasn't asking." Bill said darkly.

With a defeated sigh the man lifted his left arm to the back of his neck. They heard a faint clink and the helmet began to vent air in a loud hiss. They watched in fascination as the helmet slowly burst and separated into a cascade of metal plates that folded back gently and swiftly into the man's gorget to reveal an alien face.

He was definitely not a lylatian Krystal and the others concluded. He was faintly simian with a strong jaw line. He had light brown skin that lacked any age lines. (He could only be twenty five years old at most). The most distinguishing feature he had was his golden eyes. They seemed to glow softly in the dimly lit room. He only sported fur on his head. He had very short buzz cut headfur and a very thin beard. It all just screamed military.

Bill looked surprised, his muzzle was hanging open in disbelief. "What are you?"

"A human." Alexander answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe. "What are you?"

"A cornerian." Bill replied similarly.

"Strange." Alexander muttered to himself.

Bill tried to redirect the conversation on to the original line of questioning. "Where are you from?"

"The ark."

"What is that?"

Alexander's expression fell. "It was the last hope for my race."

They all picked up on the key word.

"Was?" Bill asked.

"Yes was, it was destroyed along with the remnants of my people." Alexander said sadly, eyes shining with unshed tears.

Krystal was surprised, there was someone else who knew what she was going through. What it was like to lose everyone and everything you have ever known. She may be scared of him still, but now she wanted to talk to him.

She started to pay allot more attention to the two men conversing in the other room. "What happened?" Bill asked, he was curious and no doubt so were the others.

"It is a rather long tale." Alexander warned, " and not without sorrow."

"I'm sorry to ask but we have to know." Bill said sincerely, "maybe it can help us understand how you got here."

Alexander became quiet for a couple of minutes. They could see the fierce internal struggle withering openly on his face. He came to a decision, "I don't want to tell you but I will. I can explain most and I can show you the rest, but I must warn you it is not for the faint of heart." He said ominously.

"How can you show us?"

Alexander motioned pointed to his back and turned slightly to reveal a blue glowing device trailing up his spine. "This is resource integration gear or as my people used to call it a rig. It is a integrated health management and strength augmentation device. It can guide its user to locations, store equipment in its digitizer, has several modules installed, and can display videos using these," he gestured to two rectangular objects on his wrists.

In the other room the Pepper and Fox were talking. "That is a interesting piece of tech." Fox remarked.

"Indeed that is something our soldiers could use." Pepper agreed. "We will have to take a look at it as soon as possible."

"Are you just gonna take it from him?" Krystal asked Fox.

"No of course not!" Fox replied indignantly.

"Well then what if he doesn't want to give it up?" Krystal retorted.

This made Fox think. Why would he give it to another race of people he had only just run into. "I'm sure that we could convince him." He said without confidence.

"Riiiight." Krystal said sarcastically.

The next thing that Alexander said grabbed everyone's attention. "Before you see the playback recording allow me to lay down the important details. My people lived on many planets scattered throughout all the known systems. One day on earth or you could say homeworld, archeologists found a artifact. It was a massive black obelisk. It looked like this," he showed them his necklace that was tucked into his gorget. It suspiciously resembled the teleporter that malfunctioned. "They called it the marker. It was a nearly limitless source of energy. So without any real understanding my government The Sovereign Colonies figured out how to build them and constructed them at all the inner colonies. After a few years something happened. The original or 'black marker' made its move."

"It was alive?" Bill asked incredulously.

"Yes I don't know how or why but it was, and it had a plan. You see it didn't just give power, it exuded a undetectable signal. That signal once activated reanimated all the corpses in a certain radius."

In the observation room Falco was having a fit. "Bullshit ain't no way that a stupid piece of rock could raise the freakin dead!" The others didn't voice it but had similar doubts.

Meanwhile Alexander was obliviously continuing his story, Bill had stopped asking questions and was intently paying attention.

"Without warning the signal activated. In no time at all any nearby bodies changed. These monstrosities would attack and kill any living thing they stumbled across until nothing remained. After a certain amount of bodies had accumulated something called convergence would occur. At critical mass the monsters or necromorphs as they were called would all gather near the marker on the planet. They would the fuse their collective mass to create a celestial satellite, or moon."

This time Falco really lost it. "Oh so now they all just mash together to turn into a fucking moon! Now I've really heard it all!" The avian raved unbelievingly.

"It does sound a little far fetched." Slippy muttered.

Peppy ever the wiseman said "it does sound a little fantastical, but I don't see how he could make this all up or why." Fox and Pepper agreed with Peppy and Krystal was to busy listening to comment.

"Then the newly formed entity would target other planets. Initially our forces seemed sufficient enough to stop them. Our navy could after spending a staggering amount of ammunition destroy a moon. Tragically it took us to long to organize a response. By the time we were ready there were too many moons to effectively fight. Another fact that took to long to grasp was that for every man, women, child, and infant we lost they gained a new killing machine. We were dying out collectively as a species while the monsters slowly filled their ranks with our fallen. At one point we realized we lost. I was seventeen when the brass made an impossible choice. I was overseeing the evacuation of Regulas IV when the order came to split the remainder of our ragged military into two separate entities. One would stay to delay the tide of necrotic creatures, the other would gather all the civilians they could and flee to the farthest corner of the galaxy. This was called operation Pheonix. By the luck of the draw I was chosen to be the part of the evacuating army. I had to say goodbye to allot of my friends."

He halted his long monologue and seemed to be reliving past memories. He must have realized he spent too long remembering. He cleared his throat, "uuhm anyways we fell back to a hastily but sturdily built spacestation, the ark. For four years we lived at the edge of known existence trying to eke out a life away from those things. It wasn't meant to last. Two days ago one of the moons by some twisted luck stumbled upon out home."

"What happened?" Bill asked.

"I will show you what happened." Alexander sighed sadly as he activated the holo emitter on his right wrist. He pressed a series of buttons and the video started.