by A. K. DuBoff
“You will never reach it.”
“When are you going to understand that you constantly underestimate us?”
The presence chuckled in her mind. “We are far older than you, and we have the knowledge of dozens of lifetimes. It is you who underestimates us.”
Regardless of which side was mistaken—or both—Kira needed to get answers. She could reasonably guess the world she had been shown was in the Gaelon System, but that didn’t explain what the beings were or how they operated. A biomechanical forest that doubled as a massive transmitter could point in a number of directions.
“Do you have bodies of your own?” Kira asked after a brief pause to collect her thoughts.
“Such simple vessels… so limiting,” the presence replied.
“I’ll take that as ‘no’.”
“Your vantage is so narrow for what it is to be an individual versus one of many. The vessels we will create will bring out the best of all forms.”
The image of the forest faded from Kira’s mind. “So, you are one of many… and one in the same?”
A sense of affirmation filled Kira’s consciousness. “A single individual can never compare to what we are.”
“But I met Nox. It spoke as an individual, just as I am speaking with you now.”
“Distinctions are never so simple. Even now, Kira, don’t you find yourself wondering where one ends and another begins?”
Kira’s surroundings distorted—first a flash, and then everything began to stretch away from her. She became but a tiny speck amid a vast network of minds. The powerful consciousness around her bore down, forcing her back into herself.
“You still think you can stand up to us?” the presence bellowed inside her.
Kira cowered within herself, unprepared to face a consciousness of that magnitude.
“Even a fraction of one of us can overtake you,” it sneered. “You will be our tool.”
The presence closed around Kira’s mind, gripping her in the way it had taken over Kaen, Hale, Jared, and stars knew how many others. It had her trapped, and it knew it.
No. I’m more than this.
Kira stood her ground, forcing the entity back to the edges of her mind. She was still confined, but she was far from consumed. “Is that all you have?”
She drove her own telepathic spear into the alien consciousness, looking for clues about who it was and how she could manipulate it.
The walls Kira had detected around the enemy mind were cracking. She forced mental spears through the weak points while taking as much care as she could to not cause permanent damage. Hale—the real Hale—was in there somewhere, and she had to find her.
Once inside, Kira began stripping away layers of consciousness, sorting the thoughts and feelings of the possessing entity versus the native mind. However, much to her distress, she found all of the recent thoughts had originated from the alien. Hale was nowhere to be found.
“Where are you?” Kira called out as she dug deeper. She received no reply.
But even though Hale was missing, Kira detected the core of the other consciousness. “Ah, there you are!”
The alien swelled in response to her direct contact, making itself appear as large as possible within its host. “This is only a part of me. You won’t be able to drive me away.”
“She’s not yours to control. Leave!”
“She has been mine for longer than she ever was herself. Do not meddle in what you don’t understand.”
Kira’s heart leaped. “How long has it been?”
The alien ignored her. “You are no closer to leaving here with your colleagues, Kira. Admit my superiority and I will consider letting them go.”
“After you’ve shown me what you are? There’s no way I can ever trust you.”
“Then I will make you.”
Kira was thrust back from the chancellor’s mind in an instant. A high-pitched scream rattled in her skull, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. The vibration seeped into her, crawling under her skin and burrowing deep within. The deeper it went, the stronger the scream became, until the vibrations became so intense it felt like physical bonds threaded through her.
They snaked their way upward and embedded in her mind, burning their way to their destination.
A fire ignited behind Kira’s eyes, searing her nerves as the burn radiated down her arms and legs.
The scream warped into a deafening buzz that overwhelmed Kira’s hearing. Her vision closed in around her. She had no sense of place or purpose, only rage welling within.
Kill. Destroy. Make them suffer.
She wasn’t sure if the thoughts were her own or were being projected into her mind.
Show them what you are now.
She was hungry, so very hungry, to feel the others’ pain—to drown out her own.
Her vision all but red, she rounded on the faceless forms around her. They stood in her way, but they wouldn’t for long.
— — —
The guards to either side of Ellen froze with fear. They raised their kinetic weapons, but their fingers twitched on the triggers, as though held back from firing by some unseen force.
Ellen stumbled backward away from them. What the…?
In front of her, Kira writhed in apparent agony. A snarl escaped her lips, revealing metallic fangs growing from her mouth. Her exposed skin took on a scaly appearance, transitioning into armored plates covering her hair and wrapping back over her head.
What the fok is happening?! Ellen’s back hit the wall. She shimmied sideways, not taking her eyes from Kira.
A mere three meters away, the woman she’d known since childhood was unrecognizable. Metallic scales now extended down her neck. Fifteen-centimeter claws poked through the fingers of her gloves like razor-sharp talons.
The creature’s luminescent orange eyes fixed on Ellen’s position.
“This can’t be you, Kira,” Ellen murmured.
She couldn’t process what she was seeing. And alien? A Taran-engineered monster? It must be connected to what the Guard was investigating at MTech—the ‘Robus’ that Hale had mentioned earlier. But how had they gotten to Kira?
“Get down!” a man shouted at her.
Ellen ducked just in time to miss a sonic blast from one of the Guard soldier’s multi-handguns as it rippled through the air. The two guards who had escorted her into the room dropped to the floor.
Dazed, Ellen turned to see another of the Guard soldiers advancing, his multi-handgun trained on Kira.
“Wh—what’s going on?” Ellen stammered. “Is she a… Robus?”
“Where did you hear that term?”
“From Hale. How did—”
“We’ll explain later,” the man said. “I’m Ari, one of Kira’s team members. Get behind me.”
Ellen tried to suppress her fear as she scrambled behind the large, armored soldier. She positioned herself between the wall and Ari, her back toward the corner.
Kira pivoted to follow Ellen’s movements. She kept her distance from Ari, but she bared her fangs in aggression.
“Is she going to kill us?” Ellen asked.
“Certainly looks like she wants to.” Ari raised his weapon with one hand and reached into a compartment on his suit with another. “But we won’t let that happen.”
He took a step forward. “Kira, if you can hear me in there, you need to get ahold of yourself.”
“That’s not going to work,” a female soldier said, coming up next to him. “She lost herself this time.”
Ari produced a compact syringe from the compartment in his armor. “Help me subdue her, Nia.”
The Kira-Robus leaped back from them, spinning toward a cluster of the frozen Mysaran soldiers. She closed the distance in a split second, moving so quickly it almost looked like she’d skipped through space. Before Ellen could blink, the creature had backhanded the soldiers, knocking them to the ground, unconscious.
The female soldier took a sharp breath. “Was that coincidence, o
r…?”
A second later, the Kira-Robus rounded on Chancellor Hale, staring straight into her eyes.
Ari shook his head with disbelief. “Stars, it is still her!” He looked at the syringe in his hand. “I think we can find a better use for this.”
His companion nodded.
The two soldiers ran toward the chancellor, leaving Ellen alone by the wall. She looked on as they and their third soldier companion converged on Hale. Ari thrust the syringe into the chancellor’s jugular and emptied the contents.
Hale swayed on her feet for a moment before falling flat on her back.
Narrowing its orange eyes, the Kira-Robus stepped forward to stand over the chancellor, one leg to either side of her hips. She stared down at the prone woman. “No more games.”
CHAPTER 22
Kira knew she wasn’t herself, but she swore to control the rage that had overcome her only moments before. It didn’t need to be channeled toward destruction. Instead, she could use it for power.
I am stronger than the darkness, she told herself. Its presence doesn’t change who I am.
Though others the aliens had encountered may have been easily swayed, Kira sensed that she was different. She recognized how the gifts she had possessed since birth were a byproduct of these aliens. That linked her to them, in a way. They couldn’t fully possess her because she was already one of them.
The realization came to her slowly as she grazed the surface of the chancellor’s mind. The answers were locked away, just out of reach. She had to find them, so she could not only get in touch with her new self but also save the innocents she had sworn to protect.
As she stood over the chancellor’s incapacitated form, Kira knew appearances were deceiving. Inside the chancellor’s body, a consciousness was very much awake. And it was time to talk.
Kira snapped a mental cage around the presence within. “Who are you?” she demanded.
This time, the alien was caught off-guard by not having the upper hand. “You may call me Reya,” it replied.
“All right, Reya. What the fok do you want?”
“What we have always wanted—to grow stronger.”
Kira tightened her mental restraints. “Well, time to rethink your strategies. You’ve messed with the wrong people this time.”
“The plans are already in motion. Eliminating me won’t change a thing.”
“It’ll get you off this planet and out of the mind of this innocent woman. I’ll count that as a win.”
The alien gave a mental sigh. “It’s not that simple, Kira. You know it’s not just me.”
Kira felt a tug on invisible tethers extending from Hale. In her mind’s eye, she saw the network throughout the Mysaran government—dozens of hosts for this Reya presence, or its as-yet-unseen associates, to possess at will. Connected to that network was also the head of MTech.
It all linked back to Hale. She was the foundation of the conduit leading back to the alien base a system away. If that conduit could be severed…
How do I cut the connection without hurting the host? Kira knew she’d need Leon and Doctor Elric to dissolve the TR in the woman’s brain, but perhaps a telepathic block would be possible as a short-term solution. If Kira could locate Hale within, she’d have an ally to suppress the alien presence through a simultaneous assault on two fronts.
She dove through the alien’s consciousness, searching for pathways into what lay underneath.
“What are you doing, Kira?” Reya questioned, a hint of concern slipping into its mental tone.
“I already told you that you don’t belong here,” Kira replied. “I’m going to get you out.”
“I know what you’re trying to do, but you won’t like what you find,” Reya cautioned.
“I’ll take my chances.”
Kira dove deeper, stripping away layers of tangled memories. I know she’s in here somewhere.
Reya tried to block Kira’s search, though all the barriers were easily overcome. Kira was in control—if only temporarily—and she had a mission to complete.
In time, she found herself deeper inside the chancellor’s mind than she’d ever ventured in another. Raw emotion flooded through her. Pain and suffering—the fuel Reya and its kind so desperately desired. Reya had had its own power source buried within, as Cynthia Hale had remained trapped inside herself, suffering. The greatest torture of all was to have witnessed decades of abuse perpetrated by her own hands. Hands she couldn’t control.
There, in the deepest depths of her mind, Cynthia still looked on with horror.
“Chancellor!” Kira exclaimed, rushing toward the mental form of the weary woman.
“That isn’t me,” came a weak reply.
“It’s okay, ma’am. We’re going to bring you back to our lab and get it out of you.”
The mental projection of the woman looked up at Kira. “It will never be gone. It’s been in me for too long.”
“That’s not true. You’re still here. That means there’s more than enough left to save.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Cynthia shuddered. “I wouldn’t even have a life to go back to.”
“You can always start over,” Kira tried to assure her.
“No. I’m just a remnant, an echo of what was. I died when it took me over.”
Kira recoiled from the woman’s bitterness. Never had she felt such darkness and defeat. “I… We can find a way to help you.”
“If you want to help me, then let me die,” Cynthia pleaded. “Please, kill me!”
Kira pulled back further as the woman clawed at her. “Make it end! Kill me! I can’t live in this prison any longer!”
Her moans filled Kira’s consciousness, begging for death to release her.
Memories of the time spent imprisoned in her own mind swirled around Kira, offering scattered glimpses into a lifetime of lies. She had been so young when Reya took her, no more than twenty years old. Ambitious and bright, she was the perfect host to manipulate toward gaining ultimate control.
Cynthia hadn’t wanted that life. She had always hoped for peace in her home system, and to unite. To have watched for decades as her alien possessor tried to tear the system apart had destroyed her every day.
All feeling, all sense of hope had been stripped away. This tiny nugget was all that remained of her former self—an ember reignited for one brief moment before it was to be extinguished forever. And she was begging for Kira’s help to finally do something on her own terms.
“I can’t kill you,” Kira told with a heavy heart. “I can’t give you what you ask.”
“No, please! You’ll never be able to get Reya out. Some of it will always be stuck here, eating away. I can’t go on like this. There’s nothing left for me.”
“I’m sworn to protect.”
“Then protect me from this monster.”
Even if Kira could stomach killing an innocent for their own long-term wellbeing, she couldn’t be responsible for the execution of a foreign head of state. Personal beliefs aside, that wasn’t a decision she could make on the Taran Empire’s behalf.
“We’re going to get you back to our Guard base, and they’ll—”
Cynthia sobbed in her mind. “No more prisons. Let it end.”
Kira was crippled by indecision. She felt the woman’s suffering as if it were her own, and she understood the wish for death. Were the roles reversed, she’d want it for herself.
As she assessed Cynthia’s state, Kira was astonished to see how far the alien had embedded in her. It wasn’t just one localized place in her brain, but a series of foreign structures integrated throughout her body. Her entire nervous system was affected. Even if it was possible for Doctor Elric and Leon to flush the alien presence from her body and make it so it couldn’t come back, Cynthia’s original organics had withered. The damage was done. They might be able to restore her mind, but the best prognosis would be to remain a prisoner in a useless body.
“I have nothing to live for,” Cynthia murm
ured. “No friends, no family that is my own. I want it to end.”
Kira wished she could make the woman’s suffering go away, to take back the decades of torture. She could rid them from her mind, but that would be no better than what Reya had done.
One thing was certain: Kira couldn’t do nothing. She made up her mind.
“I can’t kill you, but I can give you a few moments of yourself,” Kira said.
Cynthia nodded in her mind. “Thank you. When I’m gone, stop them.”
“I will.”
Kira kept a mental tether on Cynthia as she withdrew from her mind. Around her, the three members of her team stood with their weapons drawn, watching intently. Ellen was still crouched in the corner with an expression of terrified fascination. Kira looked at her hands and saw she had returned to her normal form.
“I need you to turn around,” Kira told her team.
“Ma’am—” Ari started to object.
“That’s an order,” she stated.
Reluctantly, the three soldiers turned their backs to her.
Kira stared into the chancellor’s eyes, tracing the tether back to Cynthia within. “Be free.”
The chancellor shuddered and then gasped. Her eyes went wide and wild, fighting through the sedative. “I’m—!” She rolled to her side and crawled toward a disabled soldier two meters from her. Hands shaking, she grabbed a utility knife from the soldier’s hip pouch. She looked toward Kira. “Thank you.” Cynthia drew the blade across her throat.
Kira squeezed her eyes shut and turned away.
“What the fok?” Kyle exclaimed.
“Holy shite.” Nia sucked in a deep breath.
Ari’s eyes searched hers. “What did you do?”
“I freed her,” she replied. “I gave her a few moments as herself. That’s what she wanted.”
Ari lowered his weapon. “We were supposed to bring her back for questioning!”
“She’d suffered enough.”
A pool of blood formed around Cynthia’s body as the life faded from her.
Kira swallowed. “We should—”
Choking moans sounded around the room, and half of the guards spasmed on the floor. Five seconds later, they became still, and their eyes slowly opened.