Chapter 4
“You know what you’re doing, right?” Aooo asked.
“Trust me, we have this covered.”
“Bee-dur’s life is on the line, and you’re entrusting his safety to...”
“To what?” Gamora snapped.
“To a gang of criminals! Thugs and killers!”
"All records have been expunged."
"You think that erases their past? Or yours?"
Gamora glared at Aooo. “The only thing you need to know about my past is that it is over. I am not an assassin for Thanos, or for anyone, and all of my records have been expunged by Nova Corps, which means my past is not legally your concern. Now are you going to continue to wasting time?”
“Awfully easy for you,” said Aooo. “You can just quit and the slate is wiped clean and we’re all supposed to forget about it and move on?”
“It was not easy, I have no illusions about anything being wiped clean, and I don’t expect anyone to forget. I expect someone who claims to be a professional to move forward, and focus on saving Peter’s life, rather than endlessly arguing over the past.”
“See, that’s it! You found an emergency, and got everyone to move on! You were in the right place and the right time, and became hero of the galaxy! While I...”. Aooo abruptly broke off.
“While you what?”
“Never mind,” said Aooo. Her fronds were curling themselves in stress.
“No,” said Gamora, “you started this, and we are finishing it. While you what?”
Aooo looked down. “I spent my whole life trying to atone! Every day, since I was old enough to understand it, I’ve been trying to make up for what I did!”
Gamora furrowed her brow. “What was it you did?”
“Zilnor! I was his bait! I lurked six children to their deaths! It would have been more if Bee-dur hadn’t shown up when he did!”
Gamora blinked in confusion. “You're trying to atone for what you did while you were a child?”
“Child or not, they were just as dead. And I joined Nova Corp so it would never happen again, and I tried to find Bee-dur, but I couldn’t help him, and I’ve been working and working, and trying to get clean and no matter what I do it’s never enough! I never...I never feel clean. And you, you get the whole thing legally expunged and it all seems so easy!”
“I understand,” said Gamora.
Aooo turned away. “How could you?”
“Thanos...he kidnapped me when I was a child. I was not as lucky as you. It took me a long time to find an opportunity to get away.” Gamora brushed her hair back. She was oversimplifying, but if she explained about Thanos in detail, it would become needlessly complicated. “Peter was...involved.”
Aooo looked up at Gamora in surprise.
“I don’t expect anyone to forget or forgive what I’ve done,” Gamora continued. Peter didn’t seem to blame her for any of it, and sometimes that felt like more than she deserved. “But I hope that you will work with me to save Peter. And for what it’s worth, I do not think that having my record expunged undoes anything I have done.”
Aooo nodded. “Let’s save Bee-dur.”
Gamora stifled the urge to correct her pronunciation.
—
“It’s good to see you again,” said Zilnor.
“I can’t say the same.” Peter had been right, Zilnor was the orange bug guy.
“You’ve grown more quickly than I expected. Is this the normal growth pattern for your species?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” Peter didn’t know anything about normal growth for Celestials, but the longer he talked the less Zilnor was doing. “After about twenty years as a child, we form a pod, and then emerge in our adult forms. So you’re still after my blood?”
“Yes. The last batch had been extremely valuable, but unfortunately it now seems to be lacking something. I thought a new supply would enable me to discover the problem and reinvigorate the product.”
“What if I destroy the entire place with my powers?” Peter asked. If Zilnor thought he was a Celestial, he may as well try to get something out of it.
“I am assuming you either don’t care to do that or you are unable to, or you would not have been captured.”
Damn. Peter had hoped that would work.
“Now let’s get this started.” Zilnor glanced over at the guards. “Please watch him, he’s a sneaky one and may attempt escape.”
“Damn right I’ll attempt escape,” Peter said.
He totally was, too. Just as soon as he had any idea how.
The guards led Peter over to a padded chair that was tilted into a semi-reclined position, and then pushed him into the seat.
Zilnor readied the needle. It connected, via a tube, to an unpleasantly large tank.
A couple of needle sticks, Peter thought. He braced himself.
Zilnor took his arm and plunged the needle in.
—
When Peter came to, he was still in the chair. There was a tube still sticking out of his arm, but it seemed to connect to a tank of clear liquid.
He started to sit up, and then had to let himself drop again, because he felt overwhelmingly dizzy.
Zilnor was on the other side of the lab, wrong with the tank and muttering angrily.
Peter turned his head. As long as he didn’t have to lift it, he felt okay
“Forty percent,” Zilnor muttered. He turned to Peter. “Oh, you’re finally conscious?”
Peter groaned. “Could you take your stupid bug face away? I have kind of a headache.” He had, in fact, a truly nasty headache, on top of feeling dizzy and drained.
“You have severe hypovolemia.” Zilnor stepped over to Peter and stood over him, fiddling with the tank. “It took a mere forty percent, and not only were you unconscious, you started having cardiac irregularities and breathing difficulties! I had to provide intravenous rehydration and your system is still functioning poorly. You’re going to be useless all day.”
“Well maybe if you want me to do stuff, don’t take nearly half my blood!”
“I took a mere forty percent! Why are you so weak?”
“Forty percent is a lot of blood!” Peter yelled. He sat up carefully. He still felt dizzy, but he didn’t want Zilnor standing over him like that.
“You could lose more than that as a child and still have the energy to run around making an obnoxious amount of noise!”
“Oh boo hoo! You kidnap children, you kidnap me, you steal a bunch of my blood, and I’m supposed to feel bad for you?” Sitting up and yelling was a lot of work. Peter lay back on the chair again so he could have the energy for more yelling.
“I don’t care how you feel, I care that your blood has gone all weak and useless!”
“It’s useful inside my body! Maybe you should, I don’t know, leave it there?”
“Are you even a Celestial? Are you Bee-dur, or are you some sort of distraction?”
“Yeah, you caught me,” said Peter. “I’m a distraction. That Celestial, Bee-dur, hired me to pretend to be him. So maybe you can let me go now that you can see how magic I’m not, and it won’t be necessary for Bee-due to destroy you with his vast cosmic powers?”
“Your blood seems to match. I’m going to test further to see if it’s some kind of trick.”
—
Zilnor had clearly done some cell redesign since Peter’s escape. The air came in through several small vents, none of which were any bigger than Peter’s arm.
There was a big bottle of that nasty black drink.
Peter tried the grate anyway. It didn’t come loose, and he couldn’t see how it was fastened.
Peter bent over to remove his left boot and nearly blacked out. After two or three tries, he managed to get it off. Yes, his electronic lock pick was still in the boot heel. He’d gotten it from Yondu back when he was a kid, and it opened all standard computerized locks. (In Peter’s experience, as long as he kept the software updated, it worked on about nine out of every ten locks.)
He put his shoe back on. Now he was going to have to master standing and walking to the door.
He sighed and took a big swig of the nasty black drink.
—
It turned out the door had a non-mechanical lock, with a mechanism that wasn’t accessible from the inside. And the door was slightly recessed, so Peter didn’t have any luck with the thin wire he kept coiled up in his right boot.
Zilnor had done his homework.
—
“Look,” said Peter, as he was marched back into the chair, “I don’t know why you’re bothering. It’s not like I can make my blood be more like you want it. Not that I would if I could, because you’re a huge dick.”
“The tissue matches, but there’s only a fraction of the power. What happened?”
Peter shrugged. He had zero desire to explain the whole “My evil father with vast cosmic powers who was also a planet” thing to Zilnor.
“Something must have happened! You have to know! You would have sensed the loss of the powers!” Zilnor leaned in, hissing angrily. “I can make this very unpleasant for you. I know about the physiology of pain for a number of sentient beings. Yours would not be hard to discover.”
“Honestly, dude, I have no idea,” Peter said. He hoped Zilnor was bluffing. “It all just...stopped. I don’t know why.”
“No others of your kind had an explanation?”
“I never met any others of my kind!”, Peter lied. He decided to get emotional and really sell it. “I...I don’t know what happened, but I never did meet anyone else like me. It’s just been me, for as long as I can remember.” He made his voice sound sad and pained. “I always knew I could do things, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t know if I was an ordinary Xandarian who’d had something weird happen to him, or what. And then it just...stopped. I thought I was finally going to be normal.”
Hopefully that would work. It was a lot easier to sell a lie if you could sound good and upset.
“Well, I may be able to get some use out of your blood, but I’m going to have to extract a lot more to have any chance of creating a useful product. And I’m going to have to go slower.” He pulled out the tube and fastened it to the tank. “I’m going to try removing thirty percent this time. With any luck, this should be a sustainable daily total.”
He stuck the needle back in Peter’s arm.
—
This time, when Peter woke up, it was to the sound of an explosion. He felt fuzzy as hell, but he mustered up the energy for a grin.
That would be his friends.