ON THE MARX

Entry 42

Date Unknown

I awoke in unknown surroundings.

I sat up quickly and looked around.

The first thing I noticed was that my eye hurt like hell. It was my left eye. For one it stung like a b***h and it felt like it was swollen shut.

“f**k!” I said grabbing my eye instinctively.

It stung.

It burned.

It hurt like s**t, a searing hot pile of s**t.

I could feel a huge welt up and down the eye. It burned like a b***h, yet I couldn’t gauge what the hell it was. It felt like a plasma burn, I had been around plasma burns enough times to know what it felt like. How the hell it happened to my eye. I had no idea.

I looked back around the room.

What the hell was this place?

It looked like a hospital room of some sort.

6 beds in the room.

Some with curtains draped around the beds.

Some were open.

Some were closed.

Most had beeping noises coming from behind them.

I looked down at myself.

My shirt I was wearing was torn to s**t, tatters really, barely hanging onto my body. My pants were no better but most of them were intact. I couldn’t remember how the hell I got here. I noticed that there were some bloody footprints that headed towards the bed. Some of them looked like they were staggering to get here some of them looked like they were barely there barely visible by the blood.

I swiveled in my bed and stepped gingerly on the floor.

I was wearing boots.

I looked over at the footprints and saw it was boots also.

I looked around trying to see if I could figure out where I was exactly.

Except for knowing I was in some sort of hospital, I had no way to tell.

It looked like a generic as hell hospital.

6 beds.

Some beeping machines.

A bunch of glaring daylight lights making the room light up that awful hospital white.

It was making my good eye and my head hurt.

I put my hand up to block the light a bit after staring at it.

I suddenly heard something.

Boots on the ground.

I quickly ducked to my belly and rolled under the bed.

A second later I heard the door crash in.

I looked from under the bed.

I rolled to my left rolling about 3 beds and assessed the situation.

A pair of boots walked in.

The boots positioned himself as if he was gauging the room.

“Clear,” the voice said.

A second later 4 more boots walked in.

They stopped.

“Don’t just stand their you idiots.” A new pair of boots came in and said.

It was a male, like probably the rest. His voice echoed from behind a helmet.

“He couldn’t have gone far, the Falcon did a number on him.”

The Falcon? I thought and that made my eye hurt like s**t, I suddenly saw a flash of memory, of fighting that asshole named The Falcon. He had some sort of weird plasma sword thing that for whatever reason Fakirs loved to wield.

That’s right that fucker was the one who f****d my eye up. I realized.

There was no time to waste though I saw the boots scurry around the room and start opening the curtains of the medical beds.

“Clear,” they said.

Fuck I had to get out of here fast. I looked around trying to find my way out of here. Really there was only one way to get out. Through the same door they busted in. I cursed my luck. I saw two boots come towards my side of the room while the others checked the other side.

Double f**k!

I needed some sort of distraction.

“Clear!”

The teams said.

I saw the leader pace around the room the boots walking back and forth. As I did I suddenly felt a draft. I looked around and saw a vent open behind me. It was barely wide enough that I could crawl into it.

I quickly did.

I watched the leader bend down and look at the prints on the floor.

He angrily flung over the bed I was on.

“Check under the beds.” The leader said.

As they did and were making all the ruckus I started to quickly go through the ventilation system. It was a tight squeeze it was not a place for someone like me to be crawling around in. At nearly seven feet and about 250 pounds it was not easy for me to go through it. Luckily I was very agile and nimble for my height so I managed to crawl through the vents.

As I crawled, I started to go through my memory.

The leader of these guys. He wore a strange suit.

It looked like a bug.

It was odd.

I tried to wrap my mind around it.

Why, the f**k did it look like a bug?

My eye hurt again when I was thinking about it. It was just such an odd thing to be wearing. Bug Armor. There was no other way to describe it. It had huge bulbous eyes, and a face like a bug. It reminded me of a dragon fly or some s**t like that.

 Somehow, I felt it was not the first bug-armored dude I had run into.

My memory was still hazy.

All I could remember was fighting the Falcon, and the fucker hit me in the face with this plasma sword thing. I didn’t know how long ago that was. Judging on how my eye felt it had to have just happened. Maybe it was an hour ago? Maybe it was two hours ago?

Again, I was wondering about these bug things.

What, the f**k were they?

Why were they after me?

The Marquis sent them after me maybe?

No that didn’t make any sense, why would he do that?

I crawled through the vent. My thoughts going a mile a minute.

Trying to think trying to remember.

How the hell did I get here?

Where the hell was here?

Why were these bug-dudes after me.

I reached a T intersection in the vents and I looked down both sides.

“HE’S IN THE VENTS!”

I heard the leader back behind me yell out.

“Well sure as hell ain’t going that way,” I said looking back.

I chanced it and went right.

Fifty-fifty shot was that right would go somewhere that was good to go to.

Then again it was fifty-fifty shot it would end up in a dead end.

I continued to crawl through the vents.

Stuff was starting to come back to me.

I mean it wasn’t like all my memory was gone.

I knew who I was for one.

My name was Marxus Browne, Colonel Marxus Browne, son of Albrecht Browne, yeah that Albrecht Browne, the man known as the Bear. I was working heavily undercover, I was a part of an elite group of super soldiers called the Black Knights they were personal bodyguards and cronies of Jason Black, the appointed Emperor of the Golordian Empire.

I was on a mission to find out what in the f**k was going on with this Project Rho and this other f****d up project called something like…

“SURPO” I muttered to myself.

SSURPU was how it was spelled. Somehow, I felt that I knew what the hell what it stood for but it was escaping me at this moment. People called it SURPO from what I had gathered. At least this was what I was piecing back together from the fragments of memory I was getting back as I crawled through the damned vents.

I reached a grate.

“Great!” I said but couldn’t help but to laugh at the stupid homonymic word.

I managed to pound the great open.

I poked my head over and looked around.

I was in some sort of piping system.

I looked up I saw an opening on the side that looked like a sewer but I saw something else.

It was a girl she nearly fell off the side of what looked like a pipe or something up about 50 or so feet above me. I was about to call out to her, but she nearly toppled but managed to catch herself. I looked at her curiously. She looked…strange. There was something about her I could not quite place what it was.

I heard something odd that sounded like a massive fluttering of wings.

I wondered where it came from.

“Of course, it has wings!”

I heard the girl say.

What the f**k was she talking about?

She looked around and looked like she realized that there was a ladder next to her. She grabbed on to it and started to climb up. She climbed as fast as she could up the ladder. She looked back at the abyss, there was no way to tell if she could see me from up there. All I could hear all of the sudden was this noise that sounded like fluttering of its wings.

The girl continued up the ladder until the ladder could go no more. It was broken! It didn’t go beyond a certain point from what I could see, well it did but it was easily 5 feet above her the ladder had been welded to the side of the sewer, but it was missing like 7 rails if not more.

The girl looked around; there was nothing around to hold on to. I continued to hear the fluttering of the wings somewhere. The echo of the sewer was making it sound like it was all around. I knew it wasn’t but I knew I could not tell where it was coming from.

I heard the fluttering get louder, and saw the girl as she looked around. She didn’t know where the noise was coming from either was it looked like she had to try to make it to the second part of the ladder even if it meant she died.

“Alright here goes nothing,” I watched as she squinted her eyes and using every fiber of her being she jumped. She jumped as much as she could. She was going to make it! She saw the bottom rail of the ladder it was inches from her hands she reached for it and she missed! She closed her eyes and accepted death.

It looked like she waited a while, yet she did not fall to her death. She was confused hell so was I. She opened her eyes and looked. From her right hand came these strange black…things. They had come out of her fingers like her fingernails had become claws, big thick claws. The claws had jabbed right through the solid metal side of the sewer.

“Victim of Project Rho,” I said to myself.

Project Rho.

One of the reasons I was here.

It was definitely because of that.

I looked back up at the girl.

I watched her as she grabbed the bottom rail and she climbed. She climbed and climbed and finally she reached a platform. She climbed up on the platform and started to breathe deeply. She looked up and around. Off in the distance she obviously saw a small opening that I could see, and beyond the opening she saw ships zoom by. It was a way out!

As the girl looked around and followed the dimly lit platform, I looked at what she was looking at. I could see the platform as it curved around and lead to a set of stairs. The stairs lead off into what looked to be another sewer which I did not like the thought of going into. However, the stairs went right under that opening if I made it to the stairs I could possibly climb out of the sewer. The girl looked like she had the same idea as I did.

She walked up the platform and reached the stairs. We both heard what sounded like millions of insects fly around somewhere and she looked around. She clearly didn’t know where it was, it was clearly flying round, and it was starting to become obvious that whatever it was it clearly looking for her.

I decided to follow the girl as she reached the stairs and I started to hear clicking. This time it sounded like it was coming from the opening! I heard the girl sighed but it looked like she decided she had to take the chance. If the creatures or bug armored people were outside that opening they sounded far away enough that it could be that they were no problem for me or for the girl. So I continued my climb as I watched she reached the side of the sewer that had the opening she looked at the side. It looked like it was made completely out of metal.

“Here goes nothing,” I heard the girl said as her nails became claws again and she tried pulling herself up.

However, it looked like she couldn’t, her boots were too slipper probably because of slime they might have collected from the sewer, which I was finding out about now.

“Shoot!” the girl cursed she looked around again for the noise we still heard it flying around; she didn’t have time to second guess. I wondered why she couldn’t see me. I was maybe 100 feet from her. Then again around me was darkness. I must have been too far down into this sewer to be seen.

The girl pulled her boots off and threw them to the side. She tried again. This time with her bare feet she was able to pull herself up. She began pulling herself up the side of the sewer jamming her claws into the metal and pulling herself up. It took her a while that her feet had changed and had become formed much like something that would be an expert climber with opposable thumbs on her feet.

I had no idea how that was a thing but I had to reach the top like the girl was. She was still about 100 feet above me if that. I saw the girl as she reached the top and she looked like she was so happy when she climbed out. She looked at her hands and they had become normal again, she looked down at her feet and they seemed perfectly fine as well from what I could make out. It was almost like she had willed them to be suit for the job and they had been.

The girl looked around and she froze. I looked at what the hell she was looking at. I couldn’t see what she was looking at so I climbed. I continued to get higher and higher up this sewer wall thing and finally I reached the top. But I was on the other side of the opening and the girl in front of me looked totally flabbergasted at what she was staring at she didn’t notice me climb up.

I looked towards what she did.

I froze.

Off in the distance.

It was the biggest ship I had ever seen before.

I saw the girl as she rubbed her eyes thinking that she was seeing things, no doubt she did this several times.  I looked back up and I thought I was the one seeing things.

For sitting up in the air at least 1000 feet or so away from her was a massive simply titanic ship!