Chapter 10 - Give and Take

Before the general could say anything, Null suddenly stood up and faced his ship. "You have to stop your people from trying to enter my ship. Right now".

The General then went up to the device and type in his response. "What if we don't?"

"Then you and everyone on this station will die. You have breached the plasma shield and the auto-destruct has been engaged. If we don't stop it an antimatter explosion will wipe out this station" replied Null

Lisa was stuck in her thoughts. 'Energy lifeforms, antimatter, and now it seems he is linked to his ship. Where did they come from?'. "Won't you also die?" she asked.

Null looked at all three of them in the eyes and his 'voice' came from the device. "No, I would survive. I don't wish to hurt anyone, but that ship is not yours."

All three in the room could sense the sincerity in his words. They had no idea how they would survive but they were sure they were serious. The General opened his communicator and ordered everyone to back away from the ship.

General used the communication device to talk to Null "I have ordered everyone to stand down and not go near the ship."

Null looked like he zoned out for a bit before Infy decided to reply. "You are correct, we have re-engaged shield and deactivated the self-destruct for now. Note if it happens again, we won't be able to stop it. This is a failsafe that is activated after a ship is put into lockdown mode a second time."

The General wanted to end the interrogation here. He needed to report this to the upper echelons as he was not in a position to keep asking questions. He didn't believe the talk about Angels and energy lifeforms but it was clear someone, somewhere had made major advancements and that it would unsettle the balance between the factions.

"Can I go? I only came here to meet people for the first time and this is not fun. I didn't do anything wrong" Null was getting impatient, he wanted his normal vision back. He needed to complete the system mission and soon.

Lisa was once again reminded that it was only a young teenager in front of her. A strange and powerful teenager but still only a teenager."I am sorry Null, but you have to stay a bit longer. We will have some more questions for you."

"I think you overestimate your position. I am not bound here we could leave at any time. If you force me to extract myself from this situation, it would have dire consequences for humanity. This is not a threat but a statement of fact."

"pfft, whatever. Lisa can you make sure he goes to medical and get that suit off of him" The General had no time for idle threats. He wasn't about to let some teenager try and bluff him.

Null went quietly with Lisa to medical, for multiple reasons. The first was he was also interested in his own body and wanted to see if the human doctors could give him some answers. The second was so he could gather information on the layout of the station for his escape plan.

"Null can you please remove the suit, we won't be able to do any scans with it on" requested Lisa. She was only following orders but she couldn't wait to get a look at the suit and how it worked.

"Okay" Null took off the suit and activated its self-destruct. He was loathed to destroy a perfecting working suit but he wasn't going to hand it over. The suit was designed to have small containers of acid throughout that when activated would destroy all the important components.

"NO, why did you do that?" Lisa was frustrated with the obstinate acts of this child.

"It is not yours. Stop trying to take my stuff!" if Null humans would be this greedy he might have stayed back with Zero. "You people are nothing but thieves. I've done nothing wrong but you took my ship, made it destroy my suit and you didn't even offer anything in return."

Lisa didn't know what to say, nothing the boy had said was false. She was so excited about developing new technology she hadn't considered what she was doing.

John couldn't hear the conversation but he could tell that Lisa and the boy were arguing so he step between them to protect Lisa from any possible attack.

Null had decided it was time to leave and tried to blink past the doorway as he had spotted at least 2 different escape pods.

** Spell Failure Insufficient Energy**

Without access to his suit or his fusion abilities, he had no energy. Without spells, his position here became more precarious. He would need to rely on his training to escape.

They ran the medical test and return Null to his cell. Null requested they share their finding by they refused to do so.

"You think we are thieves, how about this. We give you your medical files but you have to give us something in return" Lisa saw this as a perfect opportunity to gain some extra knowledge for no real cost.

Null wasn't instantly against the idea, but he would have to consider the offer carefully. He didn't put too much worth into the medical files. He had studied the machine and believed he could recreate them when he returned home. "What do you want?"

They haggled for a bit, and in the end, a deal was made that Null would get his medical files and Lisa would get the construction technique for building the carbon nanotube material. Martians could already make carbon nanotubes but their technique was inefficient and time-consuming. Lisa believed it was a fair deal.

The medical files didn't contain much information. None of the doctors could comprehend how Null was alive or functioning. His brain was not structured at all like a typical human brain but they could tell the source of the muteness was that the part of the brain used for physical speech was being used as an input source instead.