Part Three - Chapter 12

Final chapter of Part Three :)

I yawned; all I wanted at the moment was to curl up in a distant corner and fall asleep. I had no rest for quite a while now. I was guarding the beach, then I removed my detector, Lita cleaned the wound �" many things happened. I used a lot of my energy and lost a lot of blood. With that taken into account, I had no idea why I was still awake. But sleeping was forbidden, and I had to fight off my exhaustion.

Lita and Yulia were in the room behind the wall. They were talking to the humans who had just arrived here, explaining the situation to them. I didn’t try to hear them, because I didn’t care what they were talking about. I just hoped they’d allow me to rest soon!

Oscar was sitting a couple of feet away from me. He was staring at something only he could see �" or rather, more likely, not concentrating his gaze on anything at all. He had just awoken, so he didn’t mind waiting.

Weirdo…

It felt like an eternity had passed before my watcher entered the room. She carried a bag on her shoulder and she was dressed for travelling.

“Let’s go, Rey, we’re returning to the Headquarters.”

Curiosity managed to break through the wall of tiredness in my mind. We were leaving? But who was staying? Who was to replace us? Experience taught me not to ask such questions in other humans’ presence, so I waited patiently.

The truck that brought us here was waiting at the bank. Now it was joined by another one, totally the same; it appeared that Yulia and Oscar wouldn’t be staying here for long too.

As soon as we were alone in the truck, Lita stretched and yawned.

“What a day! How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” I informed her.

“You don’t look too good either. Get some rest, even your scales appear dull! And I doubt it’s normal”.

She was in good mood. I just couldn’t get it. Why was she so happy if we were replaced?!

Lita noticed my surprised gaze and smiled lightly:

“What are you looking at? Just lie down!”

She pushed me back slightly, trying not to touch the healing wound. I pretended that her push had some effect and fell onto the floor. Not even close to bed, but it’d do for now.

“Are you hungry?”

Oh, so she’s finally interested!

“Very. I haven’t seen any food for nearly twenty-four hours, in case someone hasn’t noticed!”

“Someone noticed. Stop whining, it’s your fault too!”

She handed me a bottle filled with thick liquid; I was afraid to question its origin, I just looked at it in dread. Lita understood my concern:

“I know it doesn’t look too appetizing… well, not at all. But that’s what I received for feeding you. I’m glad they bothered to provide something this time! Try it, I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s a special mixture created for feeding beasts.”

It was better than nothing, so I had to accept it. This thing didn’t taste as bad as I expected �" actually, it had no particular taste at all. Like… water with flour would be the closest comparison.

“Why are we leaving?” I asked. “Did we fail?”

“Yeah, right! We didn’t fail, our results are very good! Rey, you know that two beasts are not enough for eliminating those things completely. But that’s not a task you received! You were sent here to find the predators and protect people. Mission accomplished: thanks to you and Oscar, nobody got hurt. As for the predators… We’ll deal with them, but not necessarily with the help of the beasts, there are other ways to do it. So far, they installed a better block on the pipe, it’ll keep the creatures away from the reservoir, it’s safe now”.

I wasn’t as optimistic:

“Relatively safe. What are those creatures anyway? Where did they come from?”

“This reservoir is connected to another one through a system of underground pipes. The second reservoir is much more important. It is used to cool down the local power station. Usually the two reservoirs are in isolation, there are many filters in the pipes. But due to the heat the second reservoir had to be filled with the water from the first one, so additional pipes were used. The origin of those creatures is unknown at the moment. Some scientists are already sure that they’re a result of natural evolution, but I doubt it. I don’t think that anything natural could appear in a reservoir used to cool down a nuclear power station! It had to be a long-term mutation”.

“What’s a nuclear power station?”

‘Hard to explain, you’d better search it in the Internet,” Lita frowned. “I’ll show you how to do it someday.”

“What’s Internet?”

“You’re one tough case…” she said with a sigh.

Not fair. I’d know more if someone bothered to teach me! In receiving new knowledge, I had to rely only on myself, and now I was getting reproaches because of it!

But Lita wasn’t as bad as other humans, so I decided not to blame it on her.

“What are the plans for these creatures?” I asked instead.

“They’ll probably be poisoned. Together with everything else that lives in that reservoir.»

“Isn’t that too cruel?” I was surprised.

“No. If such mutation happened there, we can’t be sure about the condition of other organisms. We’ll have to eliminate them just to be on the safe side.»

No use explaining that even such mutation could be part of a natural process �" a reaction to the changes humans brought to this world. She was nice, but she was one of them, she wouldn’t understand.

The quiet humming of the engine made me sleepy. I knew we had a long way to go �" about a couple of hours. So I curled on the floor in such a way that no-one could step on my tail and closed my eyes.

“Rey,” I heard her voice while falling asleep. “You’re doing well now. Half of your trial period is over. Your results are superb, and many people don’t like that. They’ll be doing everything in their power to prove that you’re dangerous and should be eliminated. Be careful.”