Dododex

ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion

Ark: Object of Extinction

Chapter Six: Method

Everything was dark. ‘That’s how you know it works.’ Doctor Roed had said. I carefully raised my hands from where they rested on the bed beside me, and lifted the headset off my face as I had done a couple hundred times before. As the bright white lights of the room stung my eyes, I became aware of my surroundings, the room was almost perfectly circular in shape, the walls were white and had weird indents and divots, the floor wasn’t much different, but then it was, the floor was black, how had I not noticed this before, when it is the exact opposite of the walls? But the walls were black to, weren’t they? Yes, yes. That’s right, black to match the inside of the headset. I’m quite sure of it. The walls reached up endlessly, and there was a silver table in the middle of the room, where I had just been laying there was no bed as I had thought after all. There must be a way out of here. And then there was, a tall white door, with a barred window in it, like a cell door, was indented into the wall. The handle was gleaming in the light from nowhere. I crossed the room in three quick steps. I reached out, and the door swung open. I walked out and there I was, in another large room, this one had people in it, all dressed in black tuxedos, with blue letter over the left side of their chest reading: TUR. They all stood up straight at each door along the walls of the square room. One man approached me and spoke without saying, his mouth moving wordlessly, as he spoke I noticed his eyes and nose were cover by a black bandana. An odd ringing sound filled my ears and his voice finally reached me from what sounded like a long tunnel. “…arrington, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Crowe will see you now. Follow me please.” And I did, he led me to one of the doors, and opened it, there was a large oval shaped table made of what looked like oak, and elegant chairs surrounding it. There were in total, excluding me and the guard, five people in the room. The guard left, leaving me alone with the council. “Take a seat Norman.” Said Mr. Crowe coldly, I had never liked him, his uptight, clean demeanor had always unnerved me. Nevertheless, I sat and stared from council member to council member, each man had a black 3 piece suit and tie, and each woman had a black dress, all had their own colorfully designed mask to hide their identity. At the far left was a tall woman with dark brown hair, and a weird circular green mask with 8 gleaming black eyes, sitting to her right was a big beefy man who looked like he could’ve lifted everyone in the room onto his shoulders without breaking a sweat, he was bald, and had a white gorilla looking mask with black beady eyes. To the far right was a small skinny man with short straw colored hair, and a mask that was completely black with red gleaming eyes, to his left was a short plump woman with curly hair dyed blue. In the very center was a tall man with shoulder-length middle parted dark brown hair, his mask was entirely white and circular, with two black oval shaped eyes, and a wide black smile. Each person had a small gold pin on their chest with their respective name on it. In order of description it was, Mrs. Williams, Mr. Warrington, Mr. Grey, Mrs. Beckham, and Mr. Crowe. Mr. Crowe was the first to speak, “Norman Wells, you have been accused of tampering with A.G.A pods before launch, you have been brought before this council in the hope that we will be judge, jury, and executioner. The punishment for aforementioned crime, will be determined in due course, how do you plead?” I looked up and dread filled me, “I didn’t know, please believe me, it was Dominic, he said that we had orders to inspect and terminate certain pods, please, it’s not my fault, I was following orders.” “Define ‘certain’ who’s pods were they?” Mr. Warrington asked. I hesitated. “Yours, sir. And the rest of the council’s. We were caught halfway through Mr. Crowe’s pod sir. I regret a-.” “And you would believe this how? Your orders come from us, why would we tell you to destroy our own A.G.As? You complete imbecile!” Mrs. Beckham shrieked. “Was there any lasting damage?” Mr. Warrington asked. “Unfortunately, three of the A.G.As were permanently shut down do to Norman’s actions.” Mr. Crowe responded. “My actions? I’ve already I told you, I got my orders from Dominic, who said he got them from you!” I said angrily. “I don’t think you’ve heard of it, but there is this thing called a lie. As Mrs. Beckham has already stated, why would we destroy our own A.G.As?” Mr. Grey said softly. “I think. It’s about time for our verdict. All in favor of conviction?” Mr. Crowe called. All five members raised their hands. “You backstabbing fool! I did this for you!” I screamed. I wanted to punch his stupid smiling face. Mr. Crowe merely tilted his head to the side as he pulled a silver pistol out of a drawer on the table and pointed it. “Goodbye Norman.”

As Norman fell to the floor, a kind of satisfaction filled me. Almost all loose ends were tied up. “Now its about time to adjourn our meeting, dreams won’t keep what’s left of the A.G.As asleep much longer.” I said. As I stood up and strode from the room, a guard approached me. “Mr. Crowe, sir. Urgent message from Doctor Roed, he says you have less than three minutes before the A.G.As wak-.” “Quite right, I’m headed there now.” The guard nodded and trotted off. I stepped forward through another doorway, into a large oval-shaped room with large stair like pillars rising upwards. The wall opposite the doorway had a large glass wall overlooking the endless see of space. In the center of the room was a large raised circular platform, upon which were a dozen silver tables that looked suspiciously like operating tables. Several men in white hazmat suits were walking around the tables, occasionally stopping to check something off a clipboard. I stepped forwards up the stairs towards the only man not in a hazmat suit, Doctor Roed, a tall skinny white man with a white lab coat on, grey eyes, and a receding brown hairline and goatee. “Mr. Crowe! Your A.G.A station is just over here, we’re on a time crunch so hurry, if you please.” I nodded curtly and followed his pointing finger. As I sat down and lay back on the silver table, several men in hazmat suits ran up and started securing my hands and legs to the table, along with taking a cord and plugging it into the mask I had on, immediately what little light I could see before, was extinguished. “We just need to take a couple blood samples and you should be off to the races.” Came Roed’s voice to my right. I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head, and my vision slowly faded to darkness.

“Which direction did you say you saw the camp?” I asked. “Northwest, it didn’t seem to big, but there were most definitely people there, at the very least a group of twenty.” Joe replied. “Think they are friendly? Because if they aren’t… I don’t think you noticed, but all we have is a bat, and your axe, which don’t get me wrong, is effective at chopping trees, but I don’t think it would do much against more than twenty people.” Ethan asked nervously. I chose to ignore this. As we headed deeper into the forest, the air around us seemed to get more tense, any sound could be a eight foot tall overgrown chicken with an appetite that makes us look less like the main course, and more like the less qualified appetizer. “Here.” Joe called from farther ahead. I climbed faster through the bushes and roots towards Joe. He had stopped on the edge of a short cliff, at the bottom was two land masses separated by a rushing river, the opposite side of the river had large red trees with trunks as wide as the interior of three dumpsters stands in a horizontal line. They were taller than thirty 6 foot tall men standing on each other’s shoulders. In the center of the river was a large circular town surrounded by 10 foot height wooden walls, with a large gate at the side facing us. Sure enough several people were walking to and fro inside the town. Joe cleared his throat. “Think we should go and just knock on their g—.” He was interrupted by three large red objects sailing through the air and landing on his back causing him to fall over on the ground, the creatures were almost 3 foot tall and 7 feet in length. Though these creatures were nearly as tall as Ethan, this did not concern me much, the problem that concerned me the most was the sharp teeth they had just dug into the back of Joe’s neck, back, and legs. Ethan screamed and jumped over the side of the cliff and made a bee line towards the town below, I wasn’t to keen on being the three creature’s entree so I followed suit. “Open the gate! Open the gate!” Ethan screeched up at the men standing watch on the catwalks over the walls. I looked over my shoulder to see much to my dismay, but not to my surprise, that the animals hadn’t found Joe very tasty. They were sprinting towards me at a rate that Usain Bolt would be proud of. When we were less than ten feet of the gate, it creaked slightly as four men hopped down and pulled it open just enough for us both to dive through, then quickly shut it. A loud bang sounded as the three creatures slammed into the gate. I coughed slightly as I stood up and clutched the stitch in my side. No sooner had I done this, then one of the four men hit me across the head with a bat.

Next in Beezlebufo, previous in Armadoggo.

By MGG