The Pale Prince

Phenomena

A burst of light flickered before Fortress's eyes, glimmering throughout the dark room yet refusing to illuminate the incorporeal form of Invaluable Hermes or his master Achrom, who kept his purple eyes lingering almost within the embrace of the shadowy walls that lay before him. The Prince walked across the platform that he shared with the human hero, smiling devilishly at him, once more revealing his wolfish teeth. "What will you do now David?"

The Bullet-Proof man looked upon his alien host and his A.I servant - though he of course found himself the guest upon their otherworldly craft - who merely maintained his human-looking stare upon the hero, watching him intently as though he were scanning his movement and the fluctuations from within his body for some telling sign of deeper humanity and feeling, something that could not be built or programmed; at least not by Fortress's knowledge. "I will find them." Fortress looked back upon the map and at the pulsating dots that continued to divide and increase, spreading across the map like a colourful mosaic. "I will find them and bring them home."

"Home?" Achrom's flanged voice sounded out from within the darkness. "You would take them back to that military base, a place of iron and blood and paper treaties formed by paper politicians?" The Alien stood firm, moving even further out of the shade to reveal himself towards Fortress - who acted as though he hadn't seen him before through the sheer wonder and shock that he felt as he slowly recognised the fact that he was the first human to set eyes upon a being from another world, another solar system, possibly another galaxy. "That - as you know full well - is a death sentence."

Human wonder had a funny way of burrowing into the mind of any man, woman and child. Whilst Fortress was by no means an ordinary man - his bulletproof skin and his superhuman strength both telling traits  of his strangeness, making him seem almost as alien as the hulking humanoid that stood before him, or the bright A.I that had taken a 'physical form' comprised of the floating specks of data that seemed to dot all of the rooms of the dark, alien ship - he still felt the weight of human emotion upon his aged mind and his bulletproof heart, its mass lingering heavy upon both as though it corporeal and capable of weighing down the superhuman. He felt wonder and excitement at the discovery he had made, both of alien life and the discovery that he was not alone - or at least he, Jonzi and the thing  that the UNARC and British Imperial States still insisted on calling human weren't alone - yet he also felt the crushing blows of worry, regret and a lack of comprehension as he tried to cling to any signs that the world had given him to show that the others of his kind existed. He searched through his human mind - and make no mistake, it was a definitely human mind, belonging to a human who, whilst he had seen many a wondrous thing in his time, had yet to distance himself from his weaker, more feeble brethren - for some sort of clue, and found them. A UNARC senator murdered in Africa, robberies in Manhattan with no explanation...

Cursing himself within his own head for being so stupid - refraining from doing so in case it made him appear weak towards the enigmatic visitor, the show of strength feeling childish yet oh so necessary to the bulletproof man - Fortress turned back towards Achrom and found the Prince's face staring right at him, his swirling cobalt eyes looking like doors to the stars, stars which the man had taken the time to study and learn as he had flown around the planet on the odd occasion, bored of the green world beneath him, often times questioning himself as to his motives, his interests, his belonging in the world.  "That army camp has no benevolent use for Earths' celestial children - you yourself only find solitude within its walls because the humans have not found a way to kill you yet." The extra-terrestrial spoke, his mouth seeming oddly misshapen as it spoke the language of Earth. "What will they do to the ones who aren't as resilient as yourself?"