The towers began to wail and screech as the tops spun out of control. Clouds formed in the sky and lightning began to strike at the tops and soon they were beginning to create a ton, a melody of strikes. Zero quickly ran out of the palace and looked up at them to see the strikes begin to become closer in the time between strikes. “What’s happening?” a woman asked as she stood as many others did outside staring at the towers. “This makes no sense, is it some sort of warning?” many others began to ask questions similar to this. Zero who was standing in front of the palace quickly vanished and began leaping from ledge to ledge as he climbed up the towers towards the roof tops. Once half way up one tower he stood on a ledge as he watched a streak of lightning crash into the ground and leave a crater the size of a meteor crash. Zero looked back towards the sky where the lightning was still dancing in the sky striking the tops of the towers and now they were so close in the time between strikes it was as if every five seconds a giant bug zapper was electrocuting one of its pray. Zero began climbing again and then he realized he would have to make a long distance leap from one tower to another to continue towards the top. Without a second thought he took the chance and leapt towards the next tower. About half way between the towers a bolt of lightning came racing down from the heavens above and struck zero. The bolt grabbed zero and would not release him. It was as if the bolt of electricity was taking him some where he was meant to be. The bolt of lightning shot him towards the large crater in the ground from the previous strike and sent him down into the core of Clockwork.
Zero awoke in a catacomb beneath the crust of Clockwork. He had activated the metallic organism inside of him a millisecond before the lightning struck him. Zero looked at the power indicator on his wrist band and saw that the organism had used almost all of its energy protecting Zero from the bolt of raging electricity. Zero picked himself up and looked around the catacomb to see a light originating from down a tunnel. The rolling of thunder could still be heard from above and the strikes of lightning were causing the catacombs ceiling to shake and small rocks began to fall. Zero walked towards the light and once at the source he could see nothing for a moment because of the intense light coming from the small cylindrical room. The metallic organism modified the helmet goggles so that zero was able to see. Zero stared in aww at what he saw next, a bright glowing orb in the middle of a spherical object that was surrounded by gears that were rotating around it. Zero moved closer and began to notice that if this truly was the core it was quit cool in the small room. Zero looked and noticed that the core was a crystal like object that was dying. He could tell the object was dying because of the glow coming off of the object. Not to mention that there was many cracks in the object. Zero began to reach out to the object when all of a sudden the ceiling collapsed and fall. Zero moved out of the way and looked up through the collapsed ceiling to see that the towers were now completely charged with electrical energy that was now in the form of a circle of lightning. Then a large streak of energy came off of the circle and down into the room and stopped right in front of the core and began to open some sort of gateway.
Zero reached out his hand and felt of the gateway. There wasn’t any actual feel to it just a weird sense of danger. Zero tried to remove his hand from the portal like object but he began to feel a tugging feeling on his hand. This object was pulling him into the gateway and into where ever the other side was. Today just wasn’t his day. Zero didn’t fight it, he had been struck by lightning today that sent him into a catacomb and now he was being pulled into some alternate dimension. Everything went black for a minute or two and then light. A world unlike any other instead our own world like something literally out of the twilight zone or a Steven king novel. Zero looked around and there was literally nothing but white. A quite beeping came from zero’s wristband, “Air is highly toxic, battery level twenty five percent.” So not only did zero have to find something he had no idea of what it was but now he had a time limit. Zero tried something, he set his wristband to alert him to any energy signal similar to that of the core. After a few seconds the wristband had locked on to an energy signature however he had just wasted ten percent by doing so. The wristband indicated that the object that was being located was exactly thirty earth miles away. Zero would now have to expend more energy to get to the object before he ran out of power. He set the suite’s speed increase rate to the max and in the blink of an eye he was thirty miles from the starting point from which he had entered this dimension. However, there in front of Zero was a crystal like object that looked like the core zero grabbed the object and looked again at the wristband, “five percent.” Zero had no choose but try to make it back to the gateway. Zero put the speed increase to the max and then took one step towards the gateway and within a second he was there with the gateway standing before him. He looked down to see that the suite began to disappear and then did not hesitate to jump into the gateway.
Zero awoke in the room again, the suite had disappeared back into his body. Zero saw the new core lying next to him, he quickly picked it up and replaced the dying core with the new one. The core took only a minute to recognize the energy output from the new source. Then outside zero saw that the sky was clear again and that the towers were no longer electrified. Zero climbed out of the catacombs and back onto the streets. As a child zero had always wondered if the towers were built the way they were for a reason and today that along with many other questions had been answered. Zero order a construction crew to enclose the catacombs and the core back so that nothing else would disturb them. Zero looked back as he walked up the steps of the palace to see that a cloud of thunder was starting up in the distance. Zero quickly walked inside the palace. He had had enough of thunder and lightning for today. Right now all he wanted to do was go to sleep and put the catacombs, core, and towers out of his thoughts, not to mention that weird other dimension. Zero entered the palace and shut the door behind him leaving the distant storm cloud behind him. Clockwork was saved for another day, for now.
Word Count: 1254
