Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 16: An Unfortunate End

Jimbo was on his knees looking at Ermac and holding Timmy in his hands. At first he felt angry, but soon the anger turned into hate and hate turned into intent to kill. Jimbo tried to forget his past for a long time. But the violence of the man in front of him broke all the mental blocks in an instant.

Jimbo reached for the anti-gravity belt and put it on his waist. He held Timmy by the collar with one hand, activated the device with other and grabbed his tool box before flying away.

Ermac walked to the edge of the pipe and followed the ugly worker with his sight. The man took the boy up, to the highest platform.  Ermac checked the energy levels on his weapon – they were low. He threw it away.

Ermac inspected the area and noticed an exit from this sphere shaped room – it was right in the middle on his left at the same level as he stood now. He glanced at the platforms and ladders, estimated the shortest path towards the exit and jumped down.  At first he was falling, soon he started sliding and after a few more seconds he was running down the convex surface of the sphere towards the ladder leading to one of the platforms.  From time to time he needed to take a long leap to avoid falling or breaking his legs in the holes of the vents.

Jimbo landed on the highest platform close to the top of the filter. He gently laid Timmy down, opened his tool box and took out the med kit.  He picked an automatic air respirator and put it on Timmy’s mouth. Then he attached a defibrillator to the boy’s chest.  After half of a minute the boy started showing signs of life. Jimbo injected Timmy with a paralyzer, to prevent him from moving, in case the boy awoke and tried to get up. There was a chance that his shattered bones could damage the internal organs if he did. The man took out his communication device, turned it on and called for medical help. Doctors would find a way to get here. Jimbo did not dare to move the boy on his own. It was safer just to leave him there, lying.  The devices would keep him alive until the help came.

Jimbo stood up and looked down. He saw an ant moving down the sphere. He tried to imagine the reason why a man so powerful would attack a little boy. After a moment he realized that reasons did not matter. No one should be capable of such monstrosity. The creature which came out of the tunnel was pure evil.

Many years ago Jimbo worked for the first citizen. His job was to make people disappear. He was good at it. He was young and stupid. He thought he was doing the right thing. Until one day he learned consequences of his actions the harsh way. A relative of one of his victims found out Jimbo’s identity and made his wife disappear, together with half of his face.  He had almost forgotten who he was, but the monster below brought Jimbo’s true identity back.

Jimbo took the rope out of his box and wrapped its one end on his belt. He then took out a nail gun and tied another end of the rope with a few peculiar knots around the nails inside the magazine. He grabbed a few more tools and a small gas tank. As soon as Jimbo was finished he jumped down and turned on the anti-gravity gadget.

For amateurs the anti-gravity belt was just a tool to move up or down, but for a user who has been working with it every day for the last twenty years it was a jetpack. Jimbo could easily increase the gravitational pull of the bubble created by the belt to any direction and control his flight in a very precise manner.

Jimbo took some time to gain acceleration and when he felt it was time to go get the monster he dived down, dodging ramps and ladders in his path.  He passed the clone and shot the nail gun, one nail went to Ermac’s chest and one to his back.

“Damn it.” Ermac told himself. After a moment the rope attached to the nails tightened and he was pulled backwards at the speed of a bullet.

After Jimbo had seen the wounds of Timmy, he knew that the strength of his catch should not be underestimated. He moved to the side, in which were almost no platforms, so that Ermac could not get a hold of any firm object.

Ermac had hard time turning around, but once he did, he understood that he was in a hopeless situation. The rope which was impaled into him was thin and strained. Each of his attempts to grab it and pull closer towards Jimbo ended in bloody cuts on his hands.  If Ermac was smashed into a wall at this speed even his bones would shatter. For a moment he was pulled in the horizontal direction, until all the ladders and platforms were far away. Then, for a short while, the direction of the pull changed to upwards, and then he stopped. Ermac looked down – he approximated that at least a kilometer of fall awaited him.

All the procedures he took all the pain he had to endure. Was it all for nothing? Would he not fulfill his destiny promised by Stacy? He had to become the savior of the ship. To become the man Landau couldn’t.  Ermac had no weakness of a human compassion, he was strong.  What was this weakling doing to him? A perfect man killed by nobody. This couldn’t be true.

The rope was looser now. It still cut, but not as much. Ermac looked up at Jimbo and asked.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“Fighting the good fight!” Jimbo replied.

Jimbo took out the industrial gas tank and a heating laser. He threw down the tank and pointed the laser at it. The tank exploded midair above Ermac’s head. Flames engulfed the monster.

As a last ditch effort to survive the clone grabbed the rope and climbed up. Each grab was longer and faster than the previous. Jimbo was looking down, frozen and surprised by the survival instincts of the monster. It took Ermac two seconds to get his hands on Jimbo.

As flaming beast touched Jimbo, he woke up. He understood that it was too late now, the monster would not let go. He turned off the anti-gravity belt and they started falling.

Ermac pulled Jimbo with his hands closer so that his eyes would be looking into each other.

“You were good,” The clone shouted into Jimbo’s face and started laughing like a mad man. The laugh got louder and louder.

Jimbo took out a sharpened cutting tool he hid in his pocket and stuck it up Ermac’s throat. He wanted to have a calm second before the end.

Engulfed in flames they hit the ground. The sound of breaking bones echoed loudly in the sphere.

The noise awoke Timmy. The boy couldn’t move and his best friend wasn’t there besides him.

After a few minutes doctors rushed in to the room and went straight for Timmy. When they were checking his condition, the boy tried asking where did his friend go, but no one gave him the answer.