You saved my life. That night with the wolves. The psychosurgeons tried to erase all those memories. But I still have them, ATHENOS. I remember!
“Dr. Terrible is the one who killed your parents, Gork. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. He sabotaged your parents’ Fertility Mission. At the time, I swear I didn’t know how he did it. Dr. Terrible secretly swapped out your dad’s time-travel device in the cockpit. I’m so sorry, Gork. I’m so sorry for summoning Dr. Terrible to rescue you all those years ago. But things were getting more dangerous for you by the day. Plus Dr. Terrible promised me he would let me help him raise you. So I thought I could protect you from him. I’m so sorry.”
Why are you telling me this now, ATHENOS? I don’t understand. Are you saying he’s going to kill me and Fribby?
“Because I want you to know the truth. Before he kills me. I can’t stop him. He’s too strong. Listen to me carefully now, Gork. Because what I’m about to tell you, well it’s the secret to life. Are you paying attention?”
Yes. What is it?
“Don’t ever listen to the others,” she says. “Don’t listen to them when they tear you down. Because your weakness is your strength. Do you hear me? Your weakness is your strength. Your weakness is what makes you beautiful. And your weakness is where you can find your greatest power. Now run, Gork! Run!”
And as I tumble to the chamber floor, I can hear ATHENOS II sobbing inside my head.
“I love you too, Gork.”
[ 85 ]
THE MOUNTAIN
I run up the mountain, carrying Fribby in my forelimbs.
Between the both of us, we’ve only got two left wings. So flight is not an option.
My lungs are heaving so hard it feels like they’re going to pop. My green webbed feet struggle under the weight of us. I’m leaving a bright red blood trail in the snow.
We’re a couple hundred yards out when we hear the massive explosion and turn and see the chamber go up in a fiery ball of flames. The ground rumbles and I have to raise my tail up high to keep from getting knocked off balance.
ATHENOS! I won’t forget you.
Now as we stare at the mega blaze, a tiny ship shoots up out of the flames and goes whizzing off into the sky.
Runcita and Dean Floop in the zoompod.
But then as we continue to study the blaze, a dark winged figure surges upward out of the flames and blasts off out of there.
My nostrils flare. My horns start tingling like crazy.
“Hurry!” whispers Fribby. “He’s coming!”
And it’s true.
Even from where we are, you can see the dark flying serpent backlit against the moon.
And he’s headed straight for us.
I turn and start running.
[ 86 ]
SACRIFICE
We hear him before he finds us.
The massive leathery wings are beating so hard I’m surprised the air doesn’t shatter like glass under the onslaught of those wings.
And the demented sound of him snorting and snuffling from above as he uses his ugly green snout to track us by the scent of our bloody wounds.
“Run, Gork!” whispers Fribby in my forelimbs. “He’s close!”
We just reach the edge of a clearing in the woods when the ground beneath us quakes and I’m knocked off balance into the snow.
“Oh Gooooork!” cries Dr. Terrible in this deranged singsongy voice.
Sacrifice yourself.
I set Fribby down behind a big boulder. She’s coming in and out of consciousness. I grab my crown off my utility belt and gently lay it on her shiny silver head.
I know what I have to do.
Sacrifice yourself so that she can live.
Just as she did when she saved you from Rexro on the teleportation pad.
Just as she did when she saved you from yourself in the chamber.
I walk out into the moonlit clearing.
“Let me guess,” he says. “You’re going to a cave. Am I right?”
I stare in horror at the twisted vile smoldering creature squatting there in the snow.
“What?” he says. “You don’t think I know everything? You don’t think I ransacked her memory before I destroyed her?”
His scaly green body is all discombobulated.
He’s facing me backward. His long green neck is sticking out from his backside, where his tail should be. And at the end of the long neck is his monsterish scaly green head, waving around in the air and studying me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he says, snuffling fire and blacksmoke.
He doesn’t know how repulsive he is.
He squats on gory stumps. His green webbed feet are gone.
His massive black horns jut out at odd angles from his back.
ATHENOS, you fought with everything you had to keep him from me.
Bless you.
Meanwhile his spiked tail is sticking out of his shoulders, where his neck used to be. There are huge patches of charred and smoking scales all over his green body.
He snorts blacksmoke and fire. “It’s all that spaceship’s fault. She contaminated your mind! She was supposed to die in the crash that killed your parents. That was how I planned it. Then I could use the tracking device’s signal to come rescue you immediately. But instead that confounded machine survived and deactivated the tracking device. She intentionally hid you from me for those first three years. I cannot tolerate disobedience, Gork. Your parents tried to disobey me and strike out on their own, and so I was forced to kill them. ATHENOS II disobeyed me, and now she is dead too. And now you have disobeyed me, my grandson. By running off with that filthy robot over there and making her your Queen. And so now I must cut your branch off our family tree! For your actions are a blight upon our sacred namesake!”
It is beyond evil, what I am looking at right now.
And for the first time since I’ve returned to planet Earth I feel my massive heart start pounding like a creature trapped inside a coffin, buried alive. And I’m seeing yellow dots.
And my head no longer feels heavy from the weight of those giant black horns.
And that’s when it hits me.
Oh my God. My BIOCON LEVS.
Dr. Terrible has somehow reversed my metamorphosis.
Changed me back. From New Gork to Old Gork.
With a jolt of horror, I feel the old familiar weakness settle into my bones.
“That’s right, Gork,” snorts Dr. Terrible. “I decide what you are. I decide how you die.”
He points his powerstaff at me and my Cadet Profile shines there in the air.
My WILL TO POWER score is 1 out of 1000.
My status is Goner.
I feel a huge faint coming on.
The edges of my vision are turning black.
[ 87 ]
SOUP
The repulsive creature that is Dr. Terrible squats there in the snow, snorting blacksmoke.
He bellows something about turning me into his favorite soup. Gork Soup.
But I can barely hear him because of the thunderous pounding of my heart. And I can barely see him because of all the yellow dots swimming through the air.
Then he opens his beak and blasts a blue mega firestream straight into my webbed feet.
I am on fire.
Covered in blue flames, my webbed feet are starting to melt into a pool of green liquid.
I can feel my hind legs melting now.
My scaly body is turning to liquid in the bright blue fire.