As the zeppelin glided slowly in the air, I caught my breath under the lights of the warm atmosphere. The lightly blowing wind was intimidating me. The random movements of the mutants and their ferocity as they attacked each other were scaring me. But I was going to fly. No matter what, I was going to fly to that zeppelin and distract it. And my biggest priority while doing that was not to die.
I saw a mutant descending onto a street. It took the dismembered corpse of another mutant into its arms and was rising with great difficulty by flapping its wings. As it carried the mutant's body, the lower half of the dismembered body remained on the ground, but it didn't seem to care much. It was trying to do whatever it was ordered to do.
Suddenly, I spread my metal wings and threw myself off the roof. While gliding with the metal wings, I tried to tilt my body to keep my balance, but I scraped both my wing and my body against the walls. To avoid hitting a building, I propped myself against the wall with my leg and pushed myself off the building. I pounced on the winged mutant before it got too far from the ground.
When I fell on the mutant, we both hit the ground. The good thing was that the one on the bottom was the mutant itself. As the mutant screamed savagely with its teeth out, I plunged one of my wings into its mouth and pierced its head. I didn't know how I did any of these things, but I didn't even want to think about it.
"Alright... What's next?" I said and got up from the mutant I was sitting on. The winged mutant was carrying a mutant's skull in its hand. Whatever was in that skull was probably supposed to go inside the zeppelin. The skull was so damaged that I couldn't grab it by its skin. So, even though it disgusted me, I had to put my hand into the skull's mouth. I was barely holding myself back from gagging and vomiting as its tongue touched my hand. "Next stop, the zeppelin..."
The zeppelin had moved quite far away while all this was happening, but according to Rose, I could get a good momentum with the flame engine on my butt. I clenched myself. Farting was perhaps one of the greatest skills I had acquired lately. It started with a brief whisper, then a sudden explosion appeared. I could feel the skin on my butt burning, but I was already launched into the air...
I passed between two fighting mutants with great force and was rapidly moving towards the zeppelin. Fortunately, the flames on my butt had subsided, so I wasn't attracting too much attention from the other mutants. I didn't care when the winds from the zeppelin's engines started to slow me down. As I flew towards the circular metal hatch at the back of the zeppelin, a mutant holding the sides of the open metal hatch had screamed and let itself fall down. I managed to get inside just before the metal hatch closed. As I slid face down on the metal floor, I could feel the skin on my mouth, face, and many other parts of my body peeling off. My nose might have even been broken.
I sat on the floor I was on and put my hand to my nose. My nose was bleeding. "Was I supposed to inhale this or let it flow?" I muttered. "Ah... It hurts so much..."
I was in a metal, ring-shaped corridor. It was a very dark place. The room was illuminated only by a few dim green lights on the ceiling.
"What did you bring here?" A voice said. The owner of this voice was a robot. The lower half of its body was attached to a mobile crane on the ceiling. It had 10 arms sprouting from its torso, just like shrimp legs. Two of these long metal arms were near its shoulders and were extending towards me. Dozens of tentacles were coming out of a hole right above the robot's head, and these tentacles were constantly reaching out and retracting, as if they had a sensor inside them.
It was impossible not to flinch from the extending long arms. Remembering that mutants couldn't speak, I didn't make any more noise. I reached for the skull at my feet, but the skull was split in two, and the brain inside had flowed out like jam. Just in case, I gathered the pieces of brain scattered on the floor and extended them towards the robot. The robot took the brain with its long pincers and brought it to its head. It scanned the brain with a scanner coming out of the metal tentacles on its head and said, "Negative!" "You can go back!"
"Assistant!" A voice from the back shouted. The robot turned around in fear and said, "Yes, sir!"
"Can you teach these stupid mutants not to kill? It seems those stupid mutants can't even bring a human without killing them if they find one."
"Sir... Mutants can't comprehend such complex commands." The metal hatch behind me had opened and seemed to be waiting for me to leave.
"Come here! Let's talk!"
"Of course, sir!"
I was walking towards the door with heavy steps when I noticed that the robot at the end of the corridor was gone. It had probably used the rail of its crane on the ceiling to go to whoever was in command now. This meant that if I could follow the rail, I could go all the way to the command deck. I could plunge a hit from my metal wing into the captain's head, throw myself out of the zeppelin, and reach the ground. I had done this countless times in the mind tunnel before. Why not now? The metal hatch was slowly closing, and it seemed like I didn't have any other plan in my head.
"Come on, Mehmet! You can do this..." I said, and as I took my first step into the depths of the zeppelin, I felt something gooey under my bare feet. What I felt was a maggot. As I lifted my foot from the ground, my foot barely got away from the sticky liquid. Just then, I looked at my stomach. I felt relieved after pushing the maggots that had come out of my stomach back inside with my finger. "...what am I even living?"
I was trying to be as quiet as possible while following the metal rail, but every time I took a step, a squishy sound came out because of the sticky maggot liquid under my feet. It was okay... Everything on this planet was advanced biomechanics, so there wasn't much high-tech equipment. At least that's what Jose had told me back then. Or was it Rose who said that? It doesn't matter much... Whoever it was, I hadn't been caught so far.
While following the metal rails, I noticed a door on my right. The door said "engine room." The interesting part was that it was written in human language. I could understand it. This reinforced the theory that the ship's captain was a human, maybe even Arthur Vale. This would change everything. What was a better way to bring down the zeppelin than to destroy the engine itself?
As I went towards the metal door, it opened without question. As I passed through the opening of the metal door, I understood what was happening on this planet. John Crowrift's plan...
The place I entered was a machine maintenance area. Right in the middle of the room, there was a biomechanical column made of flesh, extending like old Turkish stone inscriptions. Dozens of mutants were kneeling around that column, attached to it with cables on their heads. The flow of data through the cables could easily be understood from the changing colors on the cable. The hands of these kneeling mutants were joined in front, and their heads were bowed. They looked as if they were praying. There were metal hatches in their stomachs, and those hatches were connected to holes in the floor with hoses. Those hoses seemed to be constantly feeding the mutants. But as I understood, these mutants were transferring information to that column. As I descended the metal steps, I noticed that each mutant had a code carved into its back with dried bloodstains. One said "Engine-001." Another said "Igniter-014," and another said "Adapter-441," and these bloody writings continued. The flesh column in the middle was moving like a stomach trying to digest with every flow. It was writhing in place.
The really interesting thing was the mutants lined up along the wall. They also had cables on their heads connected to the flesh column in the middle, and blood-carved writing on their backs. While being constantly fed by the hoses from the hatches in their stomachs, they were also squeezing cables on the side of the wall, pulling mechanical arms, and doing many other things. It was as if an entire computer hardware had taken on flesh and bone. Flying a zeppelin with biomechanics must have been something like this.
One of the mutants near the wall had just gotten its arm caught in a mechanical gear. Even though its arm was torn apart, it hadn't noticed that its arm was gone and was still trying to work. Just then, one of the kneeling mutants in the middle, who looked like they were praying, began to cry with great fury. The sound of crying was echoing through the pipes on the mutant and being carried somewhere. Just then, a metal door in a corner of the room opened. To camouflage myself, I immediately went to the side of a wall, next to a working mutant, and tried to look like I was busy with something. But with the constantly moving gears in front of me, the constantly steaming pipes, and all the other things, it was difficult even to look like I was busy.
What came on the rail system at that moment was the assistant. At least, another assistant. While moving along the rail system, it was carrying a mutant in its two long pincers. The mutant was covered in amniotic fluid, like a newborn baby, and was crying with great fury. As it carried the mutant, it came to the mutant with the broken arm and cut the cables and hoses attached to it. Then it tore the broken mutant into pieces with its other pincers. The hatch under the mutant opened, and the pieces of the mutant's flesh fell down from that hatch. While putting the new mutant in the old mutant's place, the mutant continued to cry. It attached the hose to the mutant's stomach and the cables to its head... Thus, the crying of both the new mutant and the kneeling mutant had stopped. Before the rail creature left the room, it carved a name on the new mutant's back with its sharp pincers. I noticed something at that moment as I looked out of the corner of my eye... If you looked at the back of the rail mutant, it was clearer because its front was covered with a metal armor. This rail creature was also a mutant. It was a half-mutant with no lower body, with its veins coming out of its upper body attached to the rail system on the ceiling. So everything here was biomechanical! Could the zeppelin also be the stomach of a living mutant?
As the rail assistant mutant left the room, I took a deep breath. Finally, the danger was over. So what was I going to do? Even if I killed these mutants in the engine room, new ones seemed to be coming.
"Psst!... Handsome... What are you doing?"
I turned my head and realized that the mutant next to me, whose flesh was torn from working and whose face was rotten, was looking at me. It was talking to me with its face turned while continuing to work. I was just about to scream in fear when it whispered, "Stop... Don't scream! It's me... Diana..."
"Diana?" I whispered.
"Yes, it's me, Diana. Your sexy mind weaver friend."
"Diana, what did they do to you?"
"Don't be silly! They didn't do anything to me. I'm a mind weaver. And the minds of these mutants are so weak that I can sense them from miles away. It's also very simple to control them. The reason most of those winged mutants are fighting each other is me. Their minds can't take anything beyond simple commands. So I make those simple commands as complex as possible to make them go crazy... Ah... If only you knew how much fun it is..."
"Are you all right? Where are you?"
"First of all, Jose says hi too. Yes, Jose, I'm talking to Mehmet. He's doing well..." It sized me up with a glance for a while. "You could say he's doing well. Inside the zeppelin... Oh, fine, I'll tell you. You're saying hi too, right Mehmet? Jose is asking."
"Yes, can you give him my regards?"
"He says hi too. Can you give me two minutes? I'm trying to talk about something important here. Okay... I'll mention him too. Eh... Anyway, what was I telling you? Ah... After being attacked by mutants, we hid in the old mutant town for a while, but that wasn't enough. We couldn't hide forever. So we made a plan. According to the plan, your old helmet's signals would be activated in the creature town to draw the attention of the armies there."
"Why didn't you wait for us?"
"Because I didn't want my sister to get into trouble. That idiot always wants to go first when something like this happens. She wants to sacrifice herself for no reason... That's not the problem anyway. The problem is that we managed to attract their attention with the signal, but the zeppelin is constantly watching the streets. Especially the streets where the signal is..."
"That's why we were able to approach the zeppelin so easily. The zeppelin was looking for you."
"Probably so..."
"So what are we going to do?"
"If you bring down the zeppelin, we can find a way to escape from here. But as soon as the zeppelin goes down, we have to leave our location before reinforcements arrive. We can sneak away by feeding off that chaos. Then we'll go back to the city center from the old mutant town."
"That's a great plan... So how am I going to blow up this ship?"
"Look, do you see that green tank over there? That tank holds the nutrients that feed these mutants, and it's highly flammable... These mutants generate the energy they need to work and the energy needed to run the zeppelin with those nutrients they're fed. If you can blow up even one of those tanks, the zeppelin probably won't be able to stay in the air. It will fly up with a series of explosions... But you need something to ignite it..."
"I'll handle that," I said with a deep sigh.
"So where's Rose?"
"She was going to look for you last..."
"That would be the last thing she should do. We're inside a warehouse, and the outside is full of mutants."
"That's what she told me..."
"I need to find her mind and tell her to stay away. Damn it!"
"What happened?"
"Telepathic communication between two mind weavers consumes a lot of energy. Since the frequency of two strong minds is strong, it's also that difficult to pull to the same frequency and communicate. I might not be able to control the mutants for a while..."
"Is that a problem?"
"I don't know... We'll see..."