Frenzy & Torch

Chapter 21: Nukes and Nurses

Annabelle was fast asleep in a hospital bed. She dreamt that she was being chased by an iguana that wanted to kidnap her and appoint her the queen of a separatist communist nation.

"Get away .... " she muttered and curled the sheets closer. "Dirty communist .... "

A nurse walked in; she was pink with four eyes arranged in diagonal pairs and a set of full lips that were as red as the sorceress's cloak. She saw her phone was about to fall off her uniform that had been neatly folded in the nearby seat. She went to readjust it and accidentally played a paused clip of a cat with a Chinese voiceover.

Annabelle's eyes flew open. She sat herself up and looked equally as surprised when she made eye contact with the nurse. "Where am I? How long have I been asleep?"

"You're in the city of Jlepon on the planet Keeyorbie. You've been asleep for six hours. You came down from the sky miraculously unharmed. You and your friends were tranquilized," the nurse answered.

Before Annabelle could say anything else, the sides of her head suddenly felt like they were being split open. She held her hands to her head and squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, God— " she fell back against the bed, writhing in pain. The readings on the cardiac monitor became a convoluted mess.

The nurse went to give Annabelle a dose of morphine, but was stopped by a strong hand. Now it was her turn to be distressed as her grip tightened like an anaconda. "Ma'am, please let go. I molted in the bathroom a few minutes ago and I don't want to bruise this skin."

Time unraveled. Annabelle's mind slipped through cracks in reality, hurtling past images too vast to comprehend—explosions, mountains of corpses, and then... clarity. In front of here was a series of explosions, then mountains of corpses.

The most vivid images came next: a towering panda loomed atop a blood-slick throne. His jade armor shimmered like currency—hollow, polished, unforgiving. His eyes glowed not with rage, but with divine entitlement. Around him knelt millions, chanting his name as if salvation and damnation were one and the same.

Next to him, reality cracked. From that fracture slithered something with too many limbs, too many eyes—Kasangar.

Annabelle felt her skin crawl. That was what Dich said with his dying breath back on Gladexus— Kasangar.

Kasangar whispered through the dimensions, not in words, but in the collapsing screams of galaxies that no longer existed. It saw her. It remembered her.

Finally, Xitanker's head was in a dome of glass. He was laughing like a psychopath, like nothing could stop him.

The pain gradually subsided and she returned to reality. She let go of the nurse and stood up. "Kasangar ... black and white... "

Fat Panda.

"Yin... it's Yin!" she muttered. Her blood ran cold. Those names, those face, that glinting jade—it wasn't just a vision. It was a warning, she could see it clearly now. They were walking into something beyond anything they could comprehend.

After some more contemplation, she looked up. "Thank you for treating us, but we can't stay. Is there a ship we can borrow? I can pay for it if need be, along with any damages."

The nurse moved in front of the door with a darkened expression. The shadow across her face gave the illusion of a dimly-lit room despite the obnoxiously bright artificial lights. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

Annabelle went from friendly to serious. "What do you mean by that?"

"The survival of our people depends on that marvelous body of yours."