Chromium

7.2

Unedited/ First draft

"Miss Zephyr"

"What...? Who is it?" Dia muttered.

Her mouth was pasty, and her tongue dry like she walked for hours in the desert.

"Wake up."

Her eyelids flickered, and she groaned. That voice sounded familiar, and oddly disturbing for some reason.

"Wake up!"

That's when she opened her eyes and realized that she should have kept them closed.

There was someone, huge but blurry, just a few steps away from her.

What's going on...? She wondered, unable to remember why she was here.

But then she saw the Umbra. She frantically crawled backward but winced. All her body was aching, her uniform was torn and stained with blue blood, but she didn't seem injured. However, even if was unharmed, the pain was very real. No matter how much she wanted to get away and stand up, she couldn't. Not immediately at least.

"Stay down. There is no need to follow the etiquette." The Umbra said. His voice would have sounded patronizing if it wasn't so toneless and robotic.

"I would have liked to finish our conversation in person. Unfortunately, I have some urgent business to attend. I hope you understand, miss Zephyr."

In person?

She slowly raised her head to take another look at him, immediately noticing there was something odd with him. The Umbra looked real, but the contours of his armor were a bit diffused, blurry and translucent.

She took a deep breath, calming down immediately as she realized he wasn't really there.

It's a hologram. But what happened to his armor? It looks...cracked?

It wasn't the only odd thing.

She was still in the same room as before, but it was dark now. The throne was broken and there were countless shards of stone scattered across the floor.

W-what happened...? She was confused, her mind fuzzy.

"I left something for you." He said after a while, drawing her attention back to him.

Something? She squinted and shook her head, unable to understand.

"In the right pocket of your uniform."

She found something there, ractrangular and small, no bigger than her palm.

"This...what is it?"

"No need to be shy. Open it."

But when she did open it, she couldn't avoid gasping.

There were several syringes---each of them probably smaller than her little finger---but it was the silver liquid inside the barrel that surprised her. Surprised and scared because she had seen it before.

It was the same thing Reyes had shown her on the Nostromus.

"Super Chromium 28" She whispered.

"Correct, but inaccurate since Chromium is just one of the components. I prefer to call it..." He said, his neck making a disturbing metallic sound when he looked at her. "your new life source."

"Reyes already told me. No need to threaten me." Dia tried to act brave, but she was shaking.

"Threaten you, miss Zephyr? I'm just stating a fact. The sooner you accept it, the better."