Justin Time and the Time Trappers
Chapter 21

If I knew then what I knew now, I think we should have had Marx call in the cavalry, maybe even get some of the local folks and give them some torches and pitch forks. The basement was not a pleasant place to be. Marx was in front of us holding one of the military grade weapons he had.

I was behind him covering his back. Olga was behind me and Sheamus was on look out. Sheamus had mild field experience, so we tried to keep him close to us. He knew how to use a weapon, but he had the most to lose, he was married, had children, and he was an overall great person.

“You better not die on us,” I had told him.

“Then don’t shoot at me,” Sheamus said.

I shook my head remembering that interaction.

“What do you think we will find down here?” Olga asked.

“Who the hell knows,” Marx said. “Knowing Hunraken’s sick fetish to combine things probably some horrible looking creatures.”

“It can’t all be bad.” I said. “Maybe we’ll see girls like four boobs.”

“Seriously?” Marx said. “Is your girlfriend’s perfectly normal ones not enough for you?”

“She’s not my…”

“Five creds that Justin will touch the first thing with four boobs,” Sheamus said from the back. Creds was the slang word for the credits we used on Saffar.

“I’m in on that,” Marx said.

“I’ll put in 10,” Olga said.

“You too?” I asked looking back at her and she shrugged.

“I’m offended,” I said.

“Probably because we are low balling it,” Marx snorted.

“You know…” I started but Marx held his hand up and signaled me to shut up. I did as we reached this creepy looking door that looks like it was rejected out of the inferno for being too creepy.

“That’s a platinum level security clearance,” Sheamus mumbled softly.

I looked at what he was saying. It was a platinum colored card reader. I looked over at Olga who pulled out her platinum rank card out of her bra and swiped it. The door opened with a swoosh.

Marx turned on the light on his weapon and scurried in there. He looked around and turned on a switch he found.

“Clear,” he said but he still had his weapon up looking around as the light came up.

We walked in, and we looked around it was a massive room. With a glass chamber not too far away from where we stood. I looked at the glass and tried to figure out what the hell we were looking at.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

“Don’t touch it,” Marx barked.

“I’m not going to…” I said turning back to him, but I saw everyone pointing back for me to turn back to the glass. I did, and I was frozen in place.

A giant eyeball suddenly opened itself. It looked around dazzled before it looked down at me. I tried to see if this thing had something it was a part of…like where the hell was the rest of it? It just looked like it was a floating eyeball by itself. Well mostly…I could see these long tendrils that looked like it was the eye nerves, but they were squirming around like an octopus or something.

“What the hell, it’s a giant eyeball!” I said.

“Hey that hurts, my name is Iris,” the eyeball said somehow.

“That’s a stupid name,” Justin said. “For a giant Eyeball? I mean something more original than Iris could be considered.”

“That coming from someone who calls himself Justin Time?” the eye said.

“How do you…” I started to ask then I realized it was talking to talk to a giant eye. “Hey, wait how are you talking?”

“Telepathy, duh.” The eye said.

“What are you exactly?” I asked.

“Well I was a person before,” the eye said.

“Before they turned you into a giant eyeball?” Marx asked. “Wait are you Iris Azure?!”

“Hey, I remember you,” the eye said looking at Marx.

“The hell Marx, I thought there was no eyes in team.” I said.

“That is the stupidest joke I’ve ever heard.” Sheamus said.

“Wait hold on, I got another one.” I said. “I guess you think yourself ass beautiful because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Seriously?” the eye said annoyed.

“Wait hold on, maybe we should keep an eye out!” I said and started to laugh. I got Olga to chortle that time. “Ha see I knew I would get one of you to laugh.”

“Will you stop it with your jokes,” Marx said.

“How do you know the eye?” Olga asked under her laughs.

“This thing was one of the reasons the original Project Rho was shut down.” Marx said. “But what are you doing here, Iris, I thought they were trying to change you back.”

“Yeah, that didn’t happen.” Iris said.

“Looks someone was eying you up,” I said laughing.

“The shit Vinny, she was a girl a few years back,” Marx said.

“Girl?” I said quieting down my laughter.

“You shouldn’t have said that, now he’s going to look for her boobs or something.” Sheamus said.

“Hey, I have some dignity,” I said as I started scanning the giant eye for boobs and stopped searching when I couldn’t see any.

“I know why you guys are here,” Iris said. “Your looking for green hair and his slut girlfriend.”

“Do you know where they are?” I asked.

“They have some sort of experiments down past this room. I’ve heard them talking about it before. They said they were experimenting with Zhiran gas.” Iris said.

“Zhiran gas?” I said.

“Zhiran gas?” Marx said. “Mother fucker has Zhiran gas?”

“What the hell is Zhiran gas?” I asked.

“Do you know what the Zhiran are?” Marx said.

“Yeah they invaded Golordia Prime before,” I said.

“The gas they had, there was a theory that the gas could change other races to things like them.” Marx said.

“Wait weren’t they giant bugs?” I asked.

“That’s one way to describe them,” Marx said.

“So how the hell…” I said.

“That is what Hunraken is testing,” Iris said.

“Krishna,” Marx said. “So, he’s doing even more fucked up experiments than he did before. Come on we have to keep going.”

We nodded and looked back at Iris.

“Don’t worry about me,” Iris said. “Stop the monster before he does anything more horrifying to other people.”

With that we continued our way down this laboratory.

“Shouldn’t we get like gas masks or something?” I asked.

“Hunraken wouldn’t let the gas seep into the common areas.” Marx said. “He’s too much of a chicken shit to allow that to happen.”

“So, what do we expect to find?” I asked.

I really wished I hadn’t been joking so much because once we were further back into this lab of Hunraken, we were really starting to see what the hell he was doing.

First, we encountered this massive room of…dolls. I didn’t know what the hell else to call them. There were eight doll looking things, seven of them looked female, one was male. They were creepy. They looked like they were as tall as regular old people. Literally I thought it was just eight people sleeping, but there was this sort of doll-look to them it creeped the holy hell out of me.

“Don’t touch the boobs of the girls, please.” Marx said as I grew closer to these dolls.

“Marx, the damn things are behind a glass.” I said.

It was true, they were behind these glass tubes. The tubes were about eight feet tall and about four feet wide. Each tube had like a bed or something like that and these…dolls…were just chilling in there. They looked creepy as all hell. Each tube had a metal covering to it below the waist of the doll.

On the covering was etched these abbreviated names: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT. I stopped and looked at the one that had the abbreviation EIGHT on it and looked in. She looked totally different to the other ones. She was thin, she had long black hair and olive skin. I had this idea she was pretty.

“Don’t touch her,” Sheamus said.

“What the hell,” I said. "I am not going to touch that creepy ass thing."

“How do you know it has a creepy ass?” Iris suddenly called out.

“Quiet eyeball!” I said.

I looked at this tube again. There was something about her, about whoever or whatever this model was designed off. I felt attached to it somehow. I just didn’t know how. I looked at the other dolls and then back at her again, this one that had the abbreviation EIGHT on the tube again, for some reason it was giving me the creeps. I really felt attached to it somehow. The others had looked back and I could feel them wondering if i was going to fondle her or something, so I shook my head trying to shake the feeling. With one last look at this "EIGHT" doll, I walked off into the next room following everyone else.

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