Flauraan

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

“Hello, nutter!”

Inside my cupboard, I silently hit my forehead with my hand and then dragged it down my face. Sophie would probably call it a ‘face-palm’ and it was a pretty pointless thing to do but to hear Sophie greet the Weraynian in that way definitely warranted the response. Doubtless he wouldn’t be impressed.

“I see you’re still trying to intimidate me with your ‘random’, annoying phrases.” The Weraynian replied coolly. I’d been right. “It won’t work. I am so close to success, and you are merely a grundle-wry buzzing around my head.”

“What?” I heard Sophie ask in confusion. She wasn’t familiar with any Staarus native species of insects (obviously).

“It’s an annoying flying insect.” The Weraynian elaborated, sounding thoroughly irked to have to explain himself. “And not much use for anything.”

“Well, that’s mean!” I could hear the false bravado Sophie was putting on. I briefly wondered where this petty argument was expected to go, when I was meant to step in for an attack. I placed my hand on the door and concentrated. From the image in my mind I saw that the cupboard’s vantage point put me in between Sophie and the Weraynian. I’d have to wait until he moved forward to successfully take him by surprise. I took in Sophie’s tensed body, the Weraynians eyes which flickered to the communications unit subtly as he took a small step forward. He seemed perturbed by everything that was going on; probably because it hadn’t gone as planned. Because of Sophie and I, he had resistance against him, something he hadn’t anticipated. I guess that was because it wasn’t every day you meet two teenagers who between them had the capacity to beat a Weraynian, including programming skill and special powers, as well as intelligence enough to know how to use their abilities. ‘Unexpected variables’, he’d called us. I wondered if that was the only reason we had the upper hand. This all took me a second to survey, and then Sophie’s tone hardened. “But it only takes one grundle-wry to ruin an entire day.”

The Weraynian rolled his eyes darkly, jaw clenched, and then he reached a heavily muscled arm over to flick a switch on the communications unit. Sophie instantly brought her hand up to bat him away from it, expression set. Obviously her strength was no match for his enhanced power, but the action made him stop and stare at her, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. He was angry, that much was obvious and why wouldn’t he be? From his point of view (his augmented, genetically enhanced, very much twisted-mind-set point of view), we were the bad guys, and we were impeding on his pride and his plan. He’d been given into his hands the future of the entire Weraynian race, and if we stopped him now he’d never be able to be part of his people again, even if he did escape judgement here. As I’d already mulled over many times, everything depended on this one event, and everyone knew it. It seemed that poor Sophie was going to be on the receiving end of the Weraynian’s wrath.

“Get. Out. Of. My. Way.” He snarled, looming imposingly over her.

Sophie crossed her arms defiantly, standing resolutely in his way, but her eyes screamed panic.

“Why?” she snapped back, voice barely wavering. “It’s over already, there’s no chance of you winning. Give up, Weraynian. You’re finished.”

As his eyes flashed dangerously, I flicked mine down to the cobbled weapon in my arms. As slowly and silently as possible, I started to turn the dial on the battery, allowing a small amount of current to begin coursing through the cable. Small, quiet sparks flared from the frayed wire. I bit my lip worriedly, then turned my attention back once more to the scene outside the cupboard.

“We will rule victorious!” he spat at her, fury and fear somehow mingling in his expression and tone. Suddenly, strangely, I was hit with a pang of sympathy for this guy. I mean, the Weraynians weren’t bloodthirsty murderers who wanted nothing but to rule the universe, they honestly believed that they needed to be the best, and that if they weren’t on top they weren’t good enough. It was so saddening to think of an entire race thinking that they weren’t good enough to the point of genetically enhancing themselves until they became these ruthless creatures. They didn’t choose this life, on the contrary it was the only life they had ever known. And now this Weraynian was faced with failure at the hands of children. In a way, I felt so sorry for him. It made it even worse that soon I would be attacking him.