ETREUM

Severen

For the next few weeks, Quorra and Troy brought me along with them to search for Deka's crew.

From what we had gathered, Deka was somewhere in the past Star System.

Somewhere in the dark sector.

And at some point, his coms went out.

Quorra tried to get Yelena, her Ship Dataform, to contact Folock, but there was no luck.

"Don't worry, Shane. We'll find them." Quorra reassured me.

I sat on the bed Quorra had tried to make for me. She had Yelena create a personal quarters for me, claiming she knew exactly what I wanted. In other words, she didn't know jack shit about me.

I stared at the numerous dumbbells and gym equipment that I just didn't need neatly racked all around my room. There was a poster of Reagan Glass, the champion bodybuilder of her time, flexing his guns at me every time I woke up in the morning.

The words "DON'T PULL OUT, PULL UP!" Were plastered at the top of my doorframe. For a 16 year old girl, Quorra had quite a dirty mind. It made me kind of scared.

I sighed and got up, bonking my head on a punching bag that Quorra had installed from the ceiling, and walked up to Ais, inspecting it.

Severen metal and Severen designs. The thing looked demonic, but sported its own grace to some degree. It was weird. I knew the Severens and the Torons were both rivalling factions. But you would think with their eight appendages and alien-like appearance, they would be living in some kind of spaceship like the movie Alien.

Not quite the case.

These past few weeks have been nothing but a rollercoaster of emotions. No matter how much I tried to fight back at fate, it just came back to bite me in the ass. SHADE was right; fate never stops messing with you. I thought I had a new life, fighting alongside Captain Price, in his battle to get his mother back.

My days spending time with Rinne.

Chilling with Umbra and Flippy.

Letting Aurora try out new foods and cuisine like an older brother.

But now, I couldn't have any of that. With the truth being revealed.

I am SHADE's past self. I would eventually grow up to become the Severen's greatest monster. Everything I had with Captain Price would disappear. No. It was already beginning. I could only hope they were safe. But safe from SHADE and the Severens? Was that even possible?

Quorra had my back. But even Quorra herself admitted she stood zero chance against SHADE. And even if I chose not to believe her, I witnessed it myself. When she joined the top ten of the Valian Council to take down SHADE, only three of them survived. And SHADE let them go on purpose to prove a point.

As long as SHADE was with the Severens, we were at a severe disadvantage.

SHADE couldn't be beaten.

I put my hand on Ais. The only Valian that had ever fought toe to toe with SHADE was the legend himself, Zennen Ful. With Zennen on our side, the Valians believed they stood a chance against the Severens. But Zennen had gone missing for years. No one knew what happened to him. At this point, many of the mid tier and low ranking Valians questioned if such a Valian even existed.