Digimon: Battle Across Time

[Marine]

Dalin watched the living. Scores of flesh-filled creatures walking around the marketeen, in a trained round-about way that mimicks the vehicle traffic a few yards away. A Rockcrete Mason lurched over a produce stand, flakes of dried crete floating from his hands while he picked at an apple. Further down, a Noble from House Darr was spiting a merchant about an Iho tin with dented sides. School Habs had let their children out early and the boys flooded the lower mercantile shops for Sugar Blots and Acid Drops and Chocolate Numers.

All of them walking towards their graves. Everyone.

Dalin turned from the window. His commercia hab stared back. He strode easily through the one room living space towards the only furniture he owned, a simple data slate. Picking it up, he tapped it on.

"All walking towards early graves." Dalin rasped. "Living in a lie."

He knew the Necrontyr would awake soon. The signs were showing all over Talthus. Dying wildlife, rivers and estuary's running dry every second the darkness of night touches it, people disappearing underground, and the most obvious had been a black obelisk rising in Tenneth Square, but the arrogant Governor-Militant stated it was nothing more than the work of Chaos.

And Dalin looked to escape the Necrontyr once more. "They can't capture me yet. I still need to find it."

The data slate contained a Gaurdsmen's I.D. and gene reading, enough to get him off planetside and onto an orbital station. He had enough credits to pay for a long voyage to Diur'Anor, a Tau Settlement on the eastern fringe, and continue trying to find it.

But the slate face began to glow.

"What-" Dalin said before his eyesight was swallowed by the intense light. And he felt the floor giveway.