The Mission

Chapter 9 Friends Saved

Charles tried to open his eyes, a small groan erupted from his dry throat. Christ what in the hell hit me he thought, feels like I've been hit several times. "Alatem," He heard a sexy voice say, "he's awake dermal regeneration at ninety five percent, all ribs have been set and are now at seventy nine percent I estimate Charles will be healed within five hours."

What the hell Charles thought he'd tried to rise but found that he was restricted to whatever he was laying on.

"Allie?" He asked a little bewildered, "ALLIE!," a little louder.

"Coming Charles!" He heard from the other side of the room, a soft sound of feet then she was beside him.

"What the hell happened?" He asked still trying to rise, "Why the hell can't I move?"

"When you got most of Ally back, she had to immobilize you in order to start the healing process. When I was trying to start your heart I not only bruised your ribs, I also broke a few of them." This last she spoke in almost whispered tones. "Your injuries weren't that healed when you went back in, the auto restart almost got you. The second part of Ally tried to stop it but was over ridden by the third part. When you started to back out as fast as you did, you reinjured your skin and ribs."

"I need to reactivate the last part of her, she has vital information that we need to finish this, plus the fact that without her Cici has shut down. I need all of her and him." Charles said trying a third time to rise off the bio-bed.

A few hours later Charles was crawling toward the fourth and final section of the main frame, from what he could see a lot around him was damaged. Finally reaching the fourth core faster this time, as this section of Ally she had been able to disengage all the safeguards, all the firewalls, all the internal security and half of the internal traps, problem was there were more added and these Ally could only half deactivate. An hour later Charles reached the chamber, he'd barely gotten it open when he heard the re-gen try to start.

"Try to hold it off, Ally!" He yelled above the whine of the machines.

"I am attempting to stall it Charles, it appears the advanced portion is trying to break out and reintegrate." Ally said. Another thirty minutes had the chamber open with all contained within spilling out.

"Charles!" started Allie, "Evacuate immediately! I cannot hold it off for longer than fifteen minutes then it will start to repair. Then I'll only be able to stall it but if you aren't most of the way out, I might not be able to hold it back!"

Charles started to push out as hard as he could, fifteen minutes later he was sweating barely more than half way out, looking where he'd been he saw it was slowly starting to move toward him. His feet were barely out the access panel when Ally, had a claw loader grasp his ankles hauling him out the last six feet in a hurry.

"That was a narrow escape; sometimes I think you do that trying to kill me Charles!" Alatem said throwing her arms around him.

"Charles," came an almost whispering Ally, "I would have never forgiven myself had you been hurt, thank you for saving me, again."

"That's alright, though I am not sure how we're going to retrieve Cici," Charles stated. "His mainframe is throughout time, my com was the only way I had of contacting him and it appears to be shut down as Cici is."

"I don't know what you expect of me Charles, besides with IT gone I can be with you and Alatem alone now." Ally said in a pissed-off mood.

"But Ally," Charles started.

Shaking her head and staring at Charles, Alatem spoke up, "Ally replay ship's recording time index zeta 5 through zeta 10.

"Of course Alatem but I..." Ally started.