My jaw dropped, and my gaze turned back to Reaper. I was pretty confident I wasn’t misunderstanding her implied meaning. Had his DNA truly told him our futures were inevitably linked? No doubt sensing the weight of our stares on him, Reaper’s head jerked up. His multifaceted eyes naturally made it difficult to know specifically what he was looking at. But in this case, the blur from the distance between us made it impossible for me to read his features.
Despite that, I could sense his suspicion just by his body language and the way he looked at all of us in turn. He opened his mouth, probably to ask what was going on when Doom’s voice resonated in my mind, startling me. From everyone else’s reaction, he had broadcast the message to all of us.
“We’ve opened the way to the basement,” Doom said. “Our scanners do not pick up any life signs, but there is a stale, rotten scent that could hint at potential bacteria in the air. Thanh is sending down a probe with a camera and air filter to decontaminate the place. Camera feed incoming.”
My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach knotted at the thought of what we would find below. The Creckels—and especially Stran—became extremely agitated. Madeline all but ripped her work gloves off her hands and fumbled with a device I couldn’t identify. A giant holographic display deployed above it. We gathered around it, eagerly waiting for the image to appear.
And finally, it did.
As the probe descended into the room, we first saw the ceiling and the upper part of the walls. What little patches of ventilation membrane remained on the ceiling had deflated and withered. As the camera continued its descent, I gasped at the sight of the door and a large section of the wall that had sealed in the Creckels holding area being completely destroyed. Tears filled my eyes realizing they had tried to break free after the Soldiers had sealed them in.
A whimper rose from my throat as the camera finally showed the floor, covered in rows upon rows of original Creckels, rolled up in mummified balls. My knees nearly buckled, and Reaper’s strong arms wrapped around me, holding me up. Tears poured down my cheeks at the renewed pain of the loss of my friends. Seeing the tiny ones in the back crushed me even more. This was the fate that would have also befallen Brees and the others had the Vanguard not rescued us when they did.
A loud, keening sound pierced through my sorrow. It was Stran, howling his own pain. That further broke my heart. So few of them had survived the war against the Kryptids, and many of those in the basement were likely acquaintances of his, although none were recognizable in their current position. The modified Creckels surrounded us, bumping their snouts against Stran and me, and rubbing their scales against us in a comforting gesture. But Stran seemed almost possessed.
He started emitting a series of growls in-between his keening sounds and all but shoved the other Creckels away before running to the entrance of the base. His distress dampened my own, the irrepressible need to calm him, to soothe his pain coming to the forefront.
“Stran, you can’t go down yet,” I called out to him, freeing myself from Reaper’s hold to hasten after the Creckel.
He ignored me, continuing to emit those desperate sounds.
“Peace,” I mind-spoke to him before sending him calming imagery.
He immediately bombarded me with a flood of images at such a high speed I easily missed half of them.
“Janelle,” Doom’s voice simultaneously said in my mind. “Stran is mentally distressed. His speech is a complete mess. For the first time, I can’t understand him. Can—”
“He’s fine,” I interrupted. “He’s just speaking too fast. He wants to go down there to awaken them. He says they’re hibernating. But they can’t hibernate this long. Give me a moment to reason with him.”
“Sweetie, it’s been over twenty years,” I said in a gentle voice. “Twenty years with no air, no food. Even in hibernation, they couldn’t have survived this long. They left peacefully.”
Stran’s response was almost angry, the images he bombarded me with akin to an assault. Once again, I struggled to parse through so many, but one kept resurfacing. I had never discussed advanced scientific topics with Creckels before, but during his long stay with the Vanguard, Stran had clearly learned things I had no clue about. Therefore, some of the concepts he was trying to convey to me got lost in translation. But I latched on to that one image of a strange looking creature, like a short, eight-legged caterpillar with a telescopic nose.
“Reaper, do you know what this creature is?” I asked, projecting it to him.
“Yes, it’s a water bear,” he replied, taken aback. He suddenly froze, an air of understanding dawning on him. His head jerked towards the Creckel. “You can hibernate like them?”
Stran gave him a sharp nod.
“Stran, are you sure?” Jessica asked with a gently dubious tone. “To survive this long, they would have needed to go into cryptobiosis. Only microscopic creatures can achieve that state of complete shutdown and survive.”
He snarled, clearly indicating he stood by his statement. But my mind was flipping through my memories of the work my parents had done, and the things I had been allowed to partake in. Crouching in front of Stran, I slipped my fingers behind the creases at the back of both his ears. He tried to jerk his head away from my touch, not wanting to be petted in his current state.
“Peace, Stran,” I said in the stern tone I’d often taken with my Creckel companions over the years when they acted stubborn. “We can’t help you if you can’t communicate rationally.”
He growled. I ignored him and began projecting soothing images while gently scratching the sensitive nooks behind his ears. Jaw clenched, lethal claws digging into the ground, the Creckel took deep breaths to try and rein himself in.
“There you go, sweetie,” I whispered, before rubbing my cheek against the side of his snout. “They are cleaning the air down there so that we can safely go down. If they can be revived, we will make sure of it. But we need you to explain calmly what steps we must take to make it happen.”
Stran bumped my shoulder in an affectionate gesture, then pressed his forehead to the back of my hand in apology. I gave him a psychic nudge to let him know all was well. He then proceeded to show me how we would know if they had survived and the procedure to awaken them. My jaw dropped realizing how the experiment on the modified Creckels had actually crippled them. If what Stran had shown me truly worked—and I had no reason to doubt him—it was no wonder my captivity companions would have died within a few months into hibernation.
By the time Stran disconnected from my mind, I was stunned to see Thanh, holding a gas mask in her hand, standing on the hovering platform inside the lift. She gestured for us to come.
“Stran, go,” I said to the Creckel, my mind racing. He didn’t make me repeat twice. I turned to Jessica who was staring at me with undisguised curiosity, like the rest of the team. “Are you familiar with the stimulant deraxamine?”
Jessica’s eyes widened, and her lips slightly parted in shock, no doubt that I would know of such a product. Still, she nodded.
“We have some in stock on board, but I’m able to synthesize more in the lab if needed,” she said.
“Good,” I said forcefully. “Make as much of it as you possibly can. We will also need intramuscular needles, hyposprays won’t cut it.”