#12: Anything New?

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Hours, or perhaps a day, later Shelby wakes up.

"Anything new?” he asks the Voice.

"Actually yes.” the voice replies"While you were sleeping I refined the z-mites. They are non-lethal now. The zombie mite won’t kill it’s host just by being implanted.”

"I’ve also been receiving the data from all the surveillance zombies, I’m currently processing it. It’s ready to analyze. Preliminary indications were that this whole is riddled with tunnels. Some of the tunnels might connect to the temple. I don’t know that for a fact yet.” The voice said.

"I also have bad news on your unit. The data’s ready now. You can view it." it’s voice was NOT happy.

"On my unit? Did it leave?” Shelby asked.

"Nope.” the voice said"they were all killed.”

"All of them?” Shelby asked incredulously."There were a LOT of guys. What happened. Can you do an overall analysis”

"Yup.” the voice replied.

A little bit later Shelby was feeling ill."This is horrible. The VC captured some of my buddies..then tortured them to death on the spot. Nasty. I feel like I’m going to puke.”

He did.

The Voice didn’t say anything.

"That certainly doesn’t look like a very likely escape route.” Shelby whispered a little bit later.

"Not at all.” the voice agreed."Not for someone with no legs.”

Shelby didn’t say anything more for a long time. Finally he did speak.

“I’ve given the situation serious thought.” he said.

"Yes?” the voice replied.

"No more Mr. Nice Guy.” Shelby replied."They shouldn’t have tortured my buddies.”

"And?” the voice asked.

"I’m going to try to escape. Never give up. That what American Soldiers do. Obviously the surface route is right out. So we’ll try to go through their own tunnel system. Perhaps we can slip past in the dark.” Shelby said"If I can’t slip past them and get caught I’ll just kill everything that moves until they kill me. Obviously capture is not an option, they’d just torture me to death. I don’t want that. Now here’s what we are going to do. If you have any better ideas sing out. Your ass in on the line too.”

"As I am so well aware.” the voice agreed.”What do you have in mind?”

Shelby told him. Pretty much a skateboard as the blood nanites could make it. He would lay flat on his stomach. It would support him off the floor about six inches. He could pull with his hands. Being low to the ground perhaps he could slip past and outdistance people who were walking or crawling. He still didn’t know what he would use for a weapon. They’d have to work on that.

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"That’s not a bad idea...to start with.” the voice said"I can make it better. I have the technology.”

"What do you mean?” Shelby said. He was relieved. He wasn’t really happy with his design but had no better idea.

"What part of ‘indistinguishable from magic’ do you not understand?” the voice asked.

"Um...well all of it I guess. You can do better?” Shelby asked, beginning to feel a bit encouraged.

"Certainly I can do better. I have to admit though that you did very good with the information you have. I just happen to have a LOT more information.” the voice said.

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The Next Episode will be
#13: It's done…
The Last Episode was
#11 : Something about this place doesn’t feel right…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue
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I'm

@everittdmickey
I surf the net, find the GOOD stuff.
and write posts about it
So you don't have to.
I also write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
Part one of this book is available from Amazon on Kindle Part one, for part two...well I guess you just gotta read it here.
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That is if you can’t wait to finish it on Steemit
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I have other books on Amazon
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AND
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I comment on the news
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Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.