by Tammy Walsh
The arms moved in unison as if they were part of the same organism.
With Computer in charge, I supposed that was true.
The arms never made contact, no movement was ever misjudged, or misplaced.
And no incision was ever made.
The devices moved around Clint’s head in gentle arcs, flashing their lasers.
I wondered if they were even doing anything until I considered where modern medicine was heading back home.
Non-obtrusive technology was at the very cutting edge.
It was only logical that would be the direction in the future.
Future.
Was that what I was witnessing?
Or was it something more?
I watched, enrapt, as the dance suddenly stopped, the arms drew back and then retracted into the ceiling.
Clint lay there a moment, not moving.
My heart was in my throat.
Had it been a success?
Would he remember who I was?
The emotions we had for each other?
I drifted up from my seat before I knew what I was doing and slowly approached the reclining chair.
“Clint? Did it work? Can you remember?”
His eyes were shut as I approached.
I watched as his eyes moved frantically beneath his eyelids.
“Clint?”
Another outcome suddenly hit me.
Messing with the brain could cause terrible issues.
What if the process reduced him to a gibbering mess?
What if he ended up confined within his mind for the rest of his life?
What if he never returned to me?
“Clint?” I said, panic growing.
I reached forward and prodded him.
“Can you hear me?”
His eyes continued their rapid REM dance.
All hope lost, I threw myself forward and wrapped my arms around him.
“Please, no. Please come back to me.”
The tears rained from my eyes and slid down my cheeks.
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Our story couldn’t end like this.
This didn’t happen.
Except they did… in real life.
This was no comic book story.
Things like this happened all the time.
“Clint…”
He needed to return to me, needed to live his life happily with me.
“My, my, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes?”
I spun at the voice.
Liam stood in the doorway, leaning against it with his shoulder, one ankle crossed over the other.
While I’d been distracted by Clint’s procedure, I hadn’t noticed him drawing nearer.
And now we were in real trouble.
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to claim my prize. You.”
He marched toward me.
I was frozen to the spot in fear as he snapped his hand around my arm.
“And now, you will be mine.”
I tugged against his hand but he was too strong.
“Don’t do this! Please! I don’t want to be with you!”
He laughed—an ugly chuckle at the back of his throat.
“Since when did what you want matter? You’re coming with me to the Shadow Realm and you’re going to carry out the greatest duty in the empire.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew I wanted no part in it.
“You’re going to be a breeder, my girl. After I fill you with my seed, my brothers will take their turn with you, one after another, until you spawn us a new generation of Shadow. Then you will be bred again. And again. And again.”
My shock morphed into horror.
“Liam would never do that!”
Liam leaned in close.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not Liam, isn’t it? My name is Sar.”
His skin peeled back, revealing a replica of Clint, who remained fast asleep on the chair, his eyes still darting side to side beneath their lids.
“W-What are you g-going to do with h-him?” I said.
“He’s a vegetable now. He’s of no danger.”
Sar raised his head.
“Computer,” he said, mimicking Clint’s voice. “Toss the creature in the medical chair out the airlock when we ascend into space, along with the rest of the trash.”
“No!” I screamed.
I bolted for Clint’s sleeping form but Sar held me in an iron grip.
“Let him serve out his death, Breeder. You have a date with destiny.”
He dragged me from the medical bay.
I kicked and screamed and wailed but there was no getting free.
Clint slipped from view as I was dragged from him and our perfect future together.
Ras
I felt the change come over me the moment I lay back on the chair.
A needle pricked me on the back of the neck and I drifted into a long and seamless sleep.
I was only vaguely aware of the arms that danced in my vision, moving side to side, making tiny incisions where I couldn’t see.
It was unnerving, lying there and seeing what was happening without being able to do a thing about it.
But I trusted Computer.
He might have been a disembodied voice and made of wires and circuit boards, but he was also programmed to obey me and every command I made.
Then the arms faded completely as my eyes shut and I sank into the comfortable leather pads of the chair.
I could hear Isabella shuffling her feet the way she always did when she was nervous.
I could even hear her breathing.
Being locked off from my other senses made those that were still working incredibly sensitive.
I heard the whir of the robotic arms that shifted independently over me, and the slight strain of the leather chair when I did move.
I faded into a dream world brought on not by exhaustion—although I was certainly that—but by the tiny gentle probes of each laser that shot into my brain, making tiny, minuscule changes that nonetheless, with each tiny assault, lulled me into a deeper and deeper sleep.
And I was gone.
Gone from this world and transported into another, more distant and ethereal place of sleep.
I was back inside my mind again.
My heart leaped into my throat at the thought I might end up trapped in here like I almost had been before.
The swirling mist danced hypnotically like writhing snakes, only they were charming me and not the other way around.
I felt those tiny probing stings in my head, and at each slight prod, the lasers affected the shape and movement of the mist, whipping them like a lion tamer so they did as they were told.
Each time they did, the mist morphed, fought back, and morphed once more, carving out a memory that was already there to be found but previously unseen.
It was a figure, but unlike one I had ever seen before.
He was tall, with fearsome eyes and blue curls of wrinkles on either side of his eyes.
He was heavily muscled with twin horns jutting from his head that stood tall and proud.
He was an alien.
“Get out there and fight the Shadow! They’re intent on claiming your mate. Are you going to stand by and let them have her?”
He wasn’t speaking directly to me.
His voice boomed over the dozen or more horned aliens surrounding me.
They rushed forward, and I found myself moving with them, toward a huge assault course.
I dropped to my stomach and crawled through mud beneath a latticework of ropes above my head.
I clutched a strange futuristic plasma rifle in my arms and sawed through the mud one inch at a time.
I emerged on the other side and didn’t bother to wipe the mud from my face.
I was already hurling myself forward onto the next section.
A series of huge metal containe
rs.
I might have been confused by what their purpose was, but the memory version of me knew exactly what he was doing.
“Get a move on, M’rora!” the big horned alien bellowed at me.
I bent down, grabbed the metal container in my hands, and raised it above my head with straining muscles.
I was shocked I was capable of lifting such heavy objects.
I hefted the container onto my back and staggered forward, carrying it toward a huge wall that rose like a mountain before me.
I dumped the container in front of it and scaled up its slippery side.
Ahead of me, the wall stood two hundred feet tall, maybe more.
No way I could scale it, I thought.
And yet, the past version of me hurled himself at it without hesitation and scaled it one handhold at a time.
A dozen horned aliens trailed behind me, each struggling just as I was.
I reached the top and felt dizzy as I peered at the drop on the other side.
“Jump and roll! Jump and roll! Jump and roll!” the commanding officer bellowed.
I held my breath, shut my eyes, and did as he ordered.
The wind whistled past my face as I fell, fell, fell…
And landed. Hard.
My knees took the worst of the impact as I rolled off the momentum.
The huge horned creature was there in my face, a glint in his eye and a grin of respect on his face.
“Congratulations, you’ve completed basic training. Now go get a shower and something to eat. The real work begins at dawn.”
The real work?
My lungs burned and my body ached.
And this was only training?
The memory faded as the mist unfurled and led into another.
I stepped back from the memory and found the mist already shifting, assuming the form of more memories, so many that they seemed without end.
So many to go through, so many yet to experience…
I gritted my teeth and pushed myself forward to learn from them all.
It was the only way I could recall what I needed to learn from my past, so I pushed forward into the mist and the shifting sands of time.
It took some time to work through the first few memories, each one an important part of me, but at this rate—and with the time here working differently to that out in the real world it was difficult to know exactly how much time had passed—it was going to take me forever to work through everything.
As curious as I was to know about myself and my past, I didn’t need to watch it all right now.
I yanked myself from a touching memory at the bedside of a dying friend back into the infinite halls of recollection.
I cast an eye over the frozen still images of each memory, ready for me to slip inside and assume the role of the main character.
“This is too slow,” I said out loud. “I need to learn more about what brought me to Earth, why I was there and what I need to do next.”
There was a momentary pause and then a shift, like a ripple, as the statues morphed into different scenes.
The line was still endless and drifted into the distance so far I couldn’t see the end of it.
The nearest scene now wasn’t the one that I’d pulled myself from, it was another, with a small bedroom and a man that had distinctive features like mine.
He had to be my father.
I felt a connection with him that I couldn’t describe.
He sat beside me on the bed and looked at me with concerned but understanding eyes.
When I asked my question out loud about wanting to know more about the reason I was on Earth, the mist had re-ordered my dreams so this one came up first.
Did that make it the most relevant? I wondered.
I slipped into the memory and joined my father.
The scene was quiet and personal, my emotions jumbled up and confused.
“One day, the time will come when you will go to track down your fated mate,” he said. “That day will be the biggest event of your life. She—or he—could be on a planet anywhere in the galaxy. There’s no way to know who she is or which species she is. She could be right next door or as far from us as it’s possible to get. But she will be out there. She might know you exist or not even be aware of our entire alien race or its fated mate culture. Either way, it will be your job to find her and bring her back to the Citadel so you might marry her.”
“What if she doesn’t choose me? What if she wants to stay on the planet where I found her?”
“Then you must accept her decision. We are the M’rora and we do not force others to do what we wish them to. That impulse belongs to our dark twins, the Shadow. We M’rora have a long and dark past. When a M’rora is born, he is born divided in two. The good and just M’rora, and the dark and twisted Shadow. He is identical to you at birth, but with his upbringing, he becomes the monster all Shadow are. He has the same drive and impulse to discover his mate. It is your job to prevent him from doing so.”
“What happens to my mate if she’s discovered by the Shadow first?” my younger incarnate said.
My father’s expression turned dark.
“You are too young to learn of such things. But you will learn. I promise you. You must go to school, complete your training, and prepare yourself for the battles you will have in the future. There are many M’rora who go out to find their fated mates and never return. I would not want you to be one of them. There is no shame in failing to bring your mate back with you, the only shame is in not trying your best.”
My younger self felt nervous and unsure.
“What if I don’t manage to bring her back? What if she doesn’t choose me?”
“There are other options. Each of them good and worthy. And do not fear. You will always have the love and respect of your mother and me.”
He reached over and took my hands in his and squeezed them.
His smile was reassuring and proud.
I felt honored and relieved my father thought so highly of me.
The memory froze for a moment before jerking and shifting to the next chapter of this particular part of my life.
I pulled myself from it.
As much as I would like to see more of my youth, and particularly of my parents, I returned to the misty platform.
So, heading out to go look for our fated mates was a part of my culture.
It was something every M’rora did.
M’rora.
Was that what I was?
That was the name of my species.
There could be no denying it now.
I was an alien.
I might have thought I was a human but I was anything but.
Then why did I look human?
Was it some sort of disguise?
Yes, I thought. It has to be.
If you were approaching an alien race who had no knowledge of you or your fated mate customs, it made sense to wear one.
That meant I’d been wearing it this entire time.
I shook my head and focused on the other memories.
I knew now why I was on Earth—to find my fated mate.
It had to be Isabella.
I felt that connection with her.
The bond.
And that was why she felt it with me.
My breath hitched in my throat at the realization…
That was why she felt it with the thing that’d taken on Liam’s form.
No, not “the thing” but my Shadow.
Sar.
The darker half of me.
I’d seen the battle that’d taken place in the storm that night.
My Shadow had hit me with a bolt of plasma and sent me crashing into the lake…
Only, he hadn’t come down to claim Isabella right away.
Something must have happened to him…
Somehow, his ship must have been damaged too…
The memories reformed and I stepped into the latest one.
Once more, I was back on boar
d my ship.
The lights weren’t flashing yet but I was in the depths of the raging storm.
Rain pummeled the ship’s hull and the sharp cracks and flashes of blue and green plasma weren’t lightning at all, but shots from our powerful plasma cannons as we attempted to swat each other from the sky.
I flew in a circle, changing altitude and using my scanners and monitors to locate my Shadow out there…
Somewhere.
He was using the same technology to track me down.
It was a desperate and deadly game that would end in tragedy for one or both of us.
Another bolt of plasma issued from the storm clouds.
My Shadow was more trigger happy than I was and fired wildly into the storm.
It gave away his position.
I waited and, using the previous three shots, ascertained where he was heading and where he was likely to be in the next instant.
He opened fire again and the bolt struck the side of my ship.
I opened fire at the same instant and met success when I struck the hull of his ship too.
We’d knocked each other from the sky.
I sailed toward the Earth’s surface while the Shadow’s ship spun at a slower pace.
Where he was incapacitated, I was destroyed.
My ship, now alive with fire, screeched toward the Earth’s surface.
I felt for the bond I shared with Isabella and steered toward it.
The closer I could fall to her, the better chance I had of finding her first.
All I could think about was getting to her before the Shadow sank his claws into her and took her back to the Shadow Realm and…
No, I thought. That couldn’t be what happens to her…
My father had informed me of the evil the Shadow were capable of and at some point, I must have learned the details of what they did to their captured mates…
They bred them.
Mating with them in some kind of ceremony, and then passed them on to one male Shadow after another in an endless procession…
Filling her with their seed so she might breed the next generation of Shadow…
And once she had birthed a child, it was torn from her breast and she underwent another round of lovers…
My heart ached at the idea of Isabella being tortured that way.
I wouldn’t allow it.
I would rather die first.
Isabella screamed.
It yanked me from the memory and out into the hall of recollection.