The Empire of Ytilaer

Chapter Forty - The Syringe

  As Engres sat to write a response email to his son, Rience Balavan was entering a law office in the Base World. Engres' laptop hummed slightly as he began to type.

  Dear Delusional Son,

  In your last email, you admit to being a reasonable man, so let's test this out: Cease and desist from all your threats, grandiose desires, and treacherous ways, and we will leave you alone. Continue down your misguided path and suffer the consequences.

  Please reply to this email at your earliest convenience with your decision.

Your Loving Father,

Engres Whitewood

  As Engres clicked the 'send' prompt, Rience and his lawyer were reviewing four documents laid out on the mahogany desk: A Claim in Defamation, A Breach of Copyright and Trademarks, A Lawsuit charging Identity Theft, and a general Disposition of Fraud against Jax Whitewood aka Rience Balavan of Balavan Technologies.

  "These will be filed later today and copies delivered to Balavan Headquarters, Mr. Balavan," the attorney stated as he shook Rience's hand across the desk.

  In his travels, Rience had made many friends and acquaintances throughout the world. This reputable lawyer in Los Angeles - Mr. Stephan Cooper - was highly recommended by an Italian adventurer and mountain climber whom Rience met twenty years ago in a group climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Monti Recalli and Rience became fast friends and went on many expeditions after that. Monti was now semi-retired, but still traveled and conducted many business ventures. Monti was only too happy to recommend Mr. Cooper, who had successfully represented him many times.

  "I too, Rience, will be glad to have this blatant misuse of your personage straightened out. I knew it couldn't be the true Rience Balavan running this new tech company, as you never took or returned my calls whenever I would call Balavan Industries. Now we'll get to the bottom of this. Don't worry. Stephan will take good care of you. And... you need to get a cell phone."

  Upon his return to Noitcif, Rience met with Engres, who joyfully scanned the legal documents and uploaded their multi-page contents into his laptop.

  "For safe-keeping," Rience announced to Engres with a wink.

  "For a blunt force wake up call!" Engres countered. "That thick-headed son of mine needs to learn some manners."

  "When are you planning to 'share' them with him, Mighty Laptop Man?" Rience chuckled.

  "Tomorrow..." answered Engres, deep in thought. He shuddered slightly, blinked and looked at Rience square in the eye. "... Yes, I think tomorrow morning will be perfect."

  Late that evening, Tarquin shimmed into view upon the path outside the Ytilaer castle. Standing at his elbow was Zakari Josephe, the chief medical doctor of Noitcif, who was armed with a briefcase, containing a very special syringe.

  "His room is the second-to-the-top floor," Tarquin explained, pointing to a lone window on the castle, which had a hovercraft suspended a few meters away, frozen in time.

  "Good thing we brought the pegasus," Zakari responded, nodding at the black, feathery creature standing beside them.

  The steed that they had brought along was Tectum, the former duke Lysander's pegasus, now assigned to Vassil.

  "Yes, especially since the elevator isn't working while time is stopped," Tarquin replied, already beginning to mount the steed.

  Zakari climbed up behind him, and in little time, the two of them were approaching the window of the palace.

  Meanwhile, back in Noitcif, Engres was also awake, sitting at his desk in his suite, watching the screen of his laptop and drumming his fingers upon the polished wood. He had opened a program titled 'PIVL', which happened to connect to the same PIVL device that had previously been implanted in Royce's brain. Thanks to Engres gerry-rigging the technology of the 6735262 police hovercraft unit from Ytilaer, the PIVL device was wiped clean of all the 'customer controlled' features; leaving only the 'eye viewing', 'pain inducement', and 'little voice in your head' settings that could be activated remotely. (Whether those were the actual names of the functions, or just titles that Engres made up was hard to tell.)

  "What's taking them so long?" the former emperor hissed, frantically checking his watch, even though he knew that the messenger and doctor had only been gone from the Noitcif dimension for a little over ten minutes.

  Carefully, Tarquin reached out a hand and gently broke out one of the panels of the Ytilaerian emperor's window, grabbed it before it fell, and slipped inside. Zakari followed him a second later, and after a command from the messenger, Tectum nickered quietly and continued to hover just outside of the glass panes.

  As time was stopped, all of the security systems in the palace would fail to go off, as they would never detect the messenger and doctor go in and out – as long as the pair escaped before time came into play again. Thus, Tarquin exercised hardly any caution as he approached the two sleeping figures in the master bed, pointed at the taller of the pair, and watched as Zakari took the syringe containing the PIVL device from his briefcase, and carefully injected it into the nape of Jax's neck.

  When time started again, the messenger and doctor had already replaced the pane and climbed back out through the palace window, remounted Tectum, and flown back through the dimensional portal where they re-entered Noitcif. Engres, meanwhile, watched as his laptop program suddenly sputtered to life, and the first sight that greeted him was the unattractive image of Lucrezia's face sleeping on the adjacent pillow, as Jax blinked and fell back to sleep. His dad recoiled in horror.