The second book in the Morph series.
Ryn's Story
I used to have dreams of the Earth, the way it used to be, centuries before The Great Wars. An Earth filled with colors I could only imagine instead of the dull tones of brown and grey I grew to loat...
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It's always so cold here.
I hated it.
The warmth and light from the suns of Zorron never reached these depths. The In-Between was barren of anything life sustaining, yet it thrived. A true oddity of the galaxy.
I let my feet lead me down passageway after passageway, alley after alley. I'd spent the better part of a few weeks scouring the streets. I'd made mental maps of most of the territory close to Mezzell's compound. It's strange what all you can accomplish when you are desperate. It was proving difficult to find someone who didn't want to be found. But I knew he was close, hiding in plain sight, just out of reach. He is so close, it is maddening.
I'd awakened to a complete massacre. Mezzell had barely survived the encounter with Ezic when he lost himself. Many had died, but Ezic never dared even harm me, so says Mezzell. For some reason that single detail gave me...hope?
I was scared of how I was going to find Ezic, if I ever did find him. Was there anything left of him? Had he become one of them? Unwelcomed flashbacks of my life back on Earth, the mutants, raced through my mind. I'd been beside myself when I found out from Mezzell that the infection had made it to the In-Between. Still very little was known about it, which was what made it so unnerving to be outside Mezzell's compound.
Still, it didn't stop me.
I hadn't come across any mutants near Mezzell's territory, none that were still living anyway. Something was hunting them, I'd found dozens of mutilated corpses, all undeniably mutants. Each circumstance was the same, whenever I stumbled upon a body, I reported it to Mezzell, and he'd send out Zorro's crew to clean up the mess and bring back what was left to his laboratory. Mezzell's request was unusual, but I only had a guess that he was looking for something, anything to possibly end this waking nightmare.
Lost in my thoughts, my mind did not register the familiar smell of rot. Not until it was too late. A putrid smell wafted towards me as I ran into another alley, causing me to gag.
Just as soon as I noticed the smell, a roaring screech echoed through the alley I traveled down. I stopped dead in my tracks in terror. Not even a few paces from me, in the darkness, emerged a mutant. It lowered itself from the walls of the alley and into the open space right in front of me.
In the dim blue light of the alleyway, I could make out limbs–many of them. They sprouted from the mutant's back like spider legs, and at the end of each leg was a clawed hand. Its claws gripped the walls as it moved across its surface, lowering further to the ground. The sound it admitted was bone chilling. It alone caused me to shake. The mutant was horrifying to gaze upon. There was no trace of who the mutant used to be; the only thing left now was a monstrosity.
I clung to the shadows and hoped it would pass me by. With the spread of the sickness still unknown, I could not let it touch me. I was not in the position to kill it alone. I cursed myself for venturing so far out of Mezzells territory. I didn't know what I had expected, perhaps I had been naive and thought I wouldn't encounter anything, I'd gotten used to the safety of Mezzell's territory.
