The Life of Gaia

CHAPTER 6: I'll Wait For You

Zantas sat in a chair, staring at the steam rising from a cup of tea his landlady had made for him. Then there was a knock at the front door. 

The lady left the pot boiling in the kitchen and let the two girls in, who immediately rushed towards him with a dark, earth-stained backpack, spilling the cup and its contents on the floor and dropping the black and red object on the table. Now he was thrashing and groaning like crazy. 

They apologized to the lady for the damage and, while, Aries got some rags to clean the floor, Gaia quickly explained to Zantas where they had found it. He nodded.

°You're right, now that I think about it, I saw one of the motorcyclists wearing it too° he commented. He then looked at the backpack as the thing inside it kicked furiously. °Whatever is in here, it will surely be dangerous. Let's get ready for anything, and above all, let's not let her get away.°

Everyone immediately understood what had to be done and closed the exits until they were completely inside. The old lady preferred to stay away from home, and with the promise to be careful not to cause any damage, they accompanied her to the door. 

After a few minutes of brief introductions, they found themselves surrounded by silence, and the wailing of the thing seemed to grow louder. While Aries watched silently from a corner of the room, the other two braced themselves for any eventuality. 

Once they had procured a tarp to catch the creature and broken the jammed zipper, Zantas urged caution. No one had any idea what was hidden in there, and everyone's mind was racing with the most absurd hypotheses. Hypotheses that would soon prove true or false. 

The flying sign began a countdown, each number lasting an eternity: three...two...one. Moved by an unseen force, the metal tab that held the package together leapt into the air, splitting it open. 

Suddenly, a very fast shadow jumped out of the opening, and not even Gaia's quick reflexes allowed her to block it again. Like a small meteor, it began to crash heavily into the walls of the house, shaking the foundations. Aries squealed and curled up under a nearby table as Zantas changed his texture, letting it pass through him to avoid being hit. The paintings came loose from their nails and the chandelier crashed to the floor.

°Gaia, do something!°

"Yes, but what?" she answered not a little annoyed as she dodged the fragments of a vase of flowers that had just been smashed

°Try to stop him using its vibrations°, he encouraged her. The girl moved her gaze to the corner where Aries was crouched, and saw her trembling with fear as she tried to follow the movements of the creature with her eyes. She decided that she would do it for her, not for Zantas.

So, between the thudding of the walls and the cracking of shattered objects, Gaia closed her eyes. She knew she was risking getting hit while concentrating, but she tried not to think about it. She focused on her target: a constantly moving body, in the middle of the air, tearing the house apart. 

The waves it emitted were constantly changing position, and the best she could do was reconstruct its trajectory. She certainly couldn't block it if she didn't even know where it was. Gaia gave Zantas a desperate look, but he didn't lose heart: his gaze remained trusting. She understood that he knew she could do it. Despite her coldness, the flying sign still believed in her. 

So, she tried another approach, changing her perception as he had taught her. 

Gradually, the vibrations of her movement dissipated into the air, and in their place she felt another kind of sensation around her: something had changed in the room. Around the bodies of everyone present, including the creature, there was a kind of aura formed by a single thread. The one of Zantas, who was flying close to the ceiling, was almost flat, a little wavy, and appeared orange; the one of Aries was more angular, as if formed by many small crests, and was purple; the one of the sphere, on the other hand, which followed it in its unbridled movement, was completely zigzagged and red. 

Gaia didn't immediately understand what she was seeing until something inside her told her. She saw the emotions. That's what the shape of the lines was like: the equivalent of an electrocardiogram. 

The girl realized that if she couldn't forcibly stop the creature, she could at least calm it down. She focused her attention on the red shape and began to breathe more calmly. Then she brought her right hand to where her heart should have been (it wasn't there) and closed her eyes. Meanwhile, the ball was aiming at the windows of the house, shattering more and more of the glass it was made of.

°Gaia, it's going to flee soon!° she heard Zantas' voice screaming at her.

Without losing her temper the girl continued to breathe, keeping her gaze on the creature. The wooden frame of the window was about to give way completely, but she knew that if she tried to hurry she would nullify everything. The bed had snapped in half and was now covered by the feathers of the blown-out pillow; Aries was crying in a corner; the floor was full of holes and covered with a carpet of shards.

Then, in the commotion, the creature began to move more slowly. She didn't notice much at first, but as the seconds passed, the little thing slowed down so much that it couldn't even hit the window. Until it swayed in the air for a while and suddenly fell to the ground. 

As soon as she heard the sound of the thing falling, Gaia lunged forward and threw herself on top of it. Zantas followed her, pushing her away and blocking her with a ribbon of light.

°It's done, it can't get free anymore ° he said. At that reassurance Aries got up off the ground and joined the other two, who in the meantime were observing the thing tied up in front of them.

On the floor she saw a spherical object, or rather a robot, from whose body protruded stumpy clawed arms. It had a single eye that emitted a beam of light, and gave the impression of being almost harmless. Something rang in her head, as if she'd seen something like it before. But when she noticed what color it was, she realized she couldn't be wrong: it was mostly red.

"This robot... I've seen one very similar before."

"In what sense? When did it happen?" she asked the other.

"When I arrived in Deep Reality I met a flying drone that took me to the planets where we met. That too was mostly red, and their central eye is identical." Gaia and Zantas looked into each other's eyes, checked that the robot could not free itself and asked her to tell the whole story. It wasn't a very long one.

"Aries, if indeed the two robots were sent by the same people, we need to understand more about their intentions." Zantas had approached the robot tied to the floor and was trying to free itself. Suddenly an echoing laughter that everyone immediately recognized cut the silence. The girls looked around bewildered when the laughter repeated a few seconds later. Then they turned to the robot.

°It's useless, your men aren't here to save you°, their companion said to the prisoner. The two suddenly understood: that laughter was an order to attack, that's why it preceded every move of the motorcyclists! The sisters breathed a sigh of relief. Zantas finished checking something, lifted himself into the air and returned to the others.

°CURE. The name of the company that produced it is this: it is written in small print under one arm.°

Gaia turned to the other girl.

"Aries, what do you want to do? Do you want to understand something more about this story?"

There was a pause. She looked at her legs bandaged and covered with wounds.

"Yes, I want to know why I'm here, but...I'm afraid of what those men might do to me. Maybe... maybe I better stay here while you go to this CURE", she replied after a while. Zantas approached.

°Girl, are you sure? Could you be alone for a while?°

"Yes. Besides, I'm safe here, I think. We're a long way from where they attacked us, aren't we?"

"Yes, we are very far away."

Gaia gave her a hug and assured her that they would be back as soon as possible. Zantas also gave her a friendly, if somewhat detached, greeting.

"I'll wait for you," Aries told them as they climbed out the window and into the air.

Then the door of the house opened and the lady who had entrusted her house to them found herself facing a completely destroyed room and a wounded girl who watched her in consternation.