by Regine Abel
She shrugged, unrepentant, her gaze never wavering from mine. Instead of offending me, her comment actually made me like her more. There had been no cockiness or disdain in the way she had spoken. Her factual tone echoed what Chaos had stated he was looking for in his next Soulcatcher.
“You are right,” I said, sobering. “I will never be you, nor do I want to be. Chaos may think he wants another you, but that’s because you have defined the ideal Soulcatcher for him. You have set the bar high and, in many ways, have become a safety blanket for him. Am I what he needs? I don’t know. But I certainly intend to prove to him—and to myself—that I am.”
“And not to me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Nope, not to you,” I said, shaking my head. “This is not your call. He doesn’t need your permission, nor do I. But I would love your approval and your mentorship.”
“You have balls,” Tabitha said, with an odd mix of admiration and disbelief.
“No balls, but tits of steel,” I deadpanned.
She burst out laughing and shook her head at me.
“I mean it,” I said, losing all playfulness. “Only a fool will try to be you, and I’m not sucking up. Copycats always fail. And in your specific case, it is an impossible task. You are the best analyst of the Vanguard for a reason. There’s no need for another you. But I’ll run circles around you when it comes to weapons and defense systems.”
“Olivia is a badass Weapons Officer,” Tabitha argued.
“Olivia already has her Warrior, and what she is, is your finest marksman. I have studied her essays on weaponry. Impressive,” I conceded with a shrug. “But I look forward to setting her straight on a few things,” I added with a smirk.
Tabitha gave me a slow once over.
“I have gone to hell and back with that man. I’ve held him in my arms while he died, time and time again for our cause. I’ve carried his soul inside me more times than I can count and nursed him to health during his rebirth sickness before the Portals made that a thing of the past,” Tabitha said with a harshness bordering fury that took me aback. “When I fell apart a few years ago, he was the rock that saw me through. I love Chaos even more than my own blood brothers. You break his hearts, I will fuck you up.”
“His hearts?” I repeated, dumbfounded.
How did we go from this to that?
She gave me a ‘don’t be stupid’ look. “He’s pretty clumsy when it comes to women… Well, clueless would be more accurate. So, you might have to take the bull by the horns on this one,” Tabitha continued in a casual tone, as if we were talking about which dress to wear at a party.
The doorbell chiming startled the living daylights out of me.
“Your stuff has arrived,” Tabitha said dismissively. “Don’t forget, Raven will be here at 1330. Be ready. You want me to mentor you? Gird your loins and remember that you brought that on yourself. I’ll get the door.”
I gaped at her as she strutted her way towards the entrance, my mind reeling with the realization she’d just given me her blessing.
“Tabitha!” I called out, just as she was about to turn into the short hallway to the front door.
She stopped and looked at me over her shoulder.
“Thank you,” I said with sincere gratitude.
An incredibly soft, big sister smile stretched her lips. She winked then went to open the door for the Warrior bringing my stuff from the frigate. My fangirling over Chaos’s former Soulcatcher went up another notch… or two.
Chapter 11
Chaos
For once in what felt like forever, we sat in the Vanguard conference room to hold a meeting instead of Legion’s office. Legion, Wrath, and Bane—the usual suspects—were gathered around the long conference table that occupied the right side of the rectangular room. Exceptionally, Tabitha had joined us as her analytical expertise might help us determine the plans for the next mission. She and her mate had settled on the opposite side from me, the large windows at their backs giving them both an almost angelic halo that belied Bane’s forever mischievous expression and Tabitha’s odd demeanor. My former Soulcatcher looked like she was in on some juicy secret that would rock our world once it came out in the open. On the left side of the room, standing in front of a giant vidscreen was a far less usual guest: our sweet Victoria.
Between her long, fiery mane and the trademark, flowy, colorful, boho dress she wore, Raven’s mother stood out in the room decorated with the standard black walls accented with gold that she always found so gloomy. It was odd to have her here instead of Raven. But the brat was yet again busy training my mate. A pang of jealousy gnawed at me. It had been two days since our return from Fobos. Two long days without seeing my woman, when we had been together almost constantly in the week since I’d met her on Thirilia.
“I have completed the medical examination of the two modified Mimics,” Victoria said. “Deisha’s wounds are on the mend. She got incredibly lucky that mutant missed the artery in her leg when he stabbed her. She will make a full recovery in a few more weeks,” Victoria said with a smile. “Unlike the previous two you had captured on Zekuro and who are still being deprogrammed from the brainwashing Khutu subjected them to, Herina and Deisha were not indoctrinated in a similar fashion. Silzi, Varnog, and two psychiatric evaluators have confirmed as much. They are not a threat to us.”
“Do you know why they weren’t?” I asked, intrigued by that oddity.
“We can’t say for sure, but Silzi surmises that it had to do with their personalities. Like Pahiven, Herina and Deisha always had more subdued, if not submissive, tempers whereas Shuria and the others are alphas,” Victoria said pensively. “The General indoctrinated those he wanted to use as assassins but didn’t bother with the ones he intended to turn as breeders.”
“But he planned on making Shuria one of the breeders for Bane,” Legion argued.
“He said that to get her to play along,” Bane replied. “But the General knew all along it wouldn’t come to pass, either by my defection or by her refusal to be turned into a simple broodmare.”
“Well, that is some good news,” Wrath said. “Can what has been done to them be undone?”
“No,” Victoria said with a sad look in her pale blue eyes. “They will be able to live a normal life among their people, but reproduction is out of the question for them. In fact, both of them have requested to be spayed. We are leaving that decision to them and their people and will only provide medical assistance if they so require.”
We all nodded sadly, and I pushed back the anger burning inside me. Now wasn’t the time to let rage cloud my judgement. There would be time later to avenge these poor females for the wrongs and the suffering they had endured.
“What can you tell us about the mutants?” I asked.
Victoria sighed heavily, her freckled face hiding nothing of the outrage she felt on their behalf.
“Our lab analyses allowed us to get a clearer picture of what is going on. The mutants are indeed Queen Pahiven’s surviving offspring. The General’s plan was as devious as it was clever, but he made one huge miscalculation,” Victoria said. “Even though the modified Mimics take on all the traits and abilities of the species they morph into, their basic DNA doesn’t change. Ditto with their offspring, even if they come out as larvae. Herina told me that more than half, if not two-thirds of all the larvae died within minutes of hatching or before the egg even hatched.”
“What?!” we all exclaimed simultaneously.
Under different circumstances, it might have been funny.
“As fetuses, Mimics start morphing in the second month of the pregnancy,” Victoria explained. “Some of them ‘forget’ their normal form or morph into something that could be harmful to them. Their mothers coax them back into their natural form and shelter them from self-harm. Mimic couples usually start living in opposite schedules so the father can take over the coaxing work while the mother sleeps. It’s a very engaged relationship which is why that species is so incred
ibly tightly knit.”
“Damn,” Tabitha whispered. “As Kryptid eggs, the relationship with the mother would be severed the minute it was laid.
“Exactly. Which resulted in massive deaths,” Victoria said, while tapping a few commands on the interface of the conference table.
The image of a flute-shaped, brown mushroom appeared next to a large leaf similar to the ones the adult Mimics had eaten while morphed into female Kryptids.
“The image on the left is a lethis mushroom,” Victoria continued. “Mimic mothers use its spores to make a drink that helps reduce the fetus’ urge to morph. Mimic infants also drink it in their first two to three years of life until they are old enough to control their morphing.” She pointed at the leaf next to it. “And that’s a leaf from the loxia plant. It is highly toxic, but the Kryptid Workers are able to safely consume it and synthesize it into a serum that has somewhat similar properties on top of acting like a sedative.”
“That’s what they were injecting into the children with their needle fingers!” I exclaimed, still shuddering at the memory.
“Yes,” Victoria answered. “They have started injecting the eggs and the hatchlings with it to try and slow the process, but it’s not the same as a mother coaxing them back to their normal form, and Pahiven lays far too many eggs a day for each of them to be assigned someone to monitor them in constantly. The problem is that, according to Herina, many of the larvae that survive are either crippled or unstable. The Kryptid DNA is too strong but doesn’t properly mesh with the Mimic DNA. And when the latter loses the battle, you end up with the insane mutants that Shuria had to kill. Apparently, countless highly knowledgeable Workers were lost to such feral mutants.”
“Worse still, I had a conversation with Shuria before she left for the Moon of Melibos,” Bane said with a somber tone. “Queen Pahiven is apparently a vegetable now. She’s just a body pushing out eggs that the General continues to experiment with. Shuria and her sisters fled with the mutants they could rescue when Khutu set a new pureblood Kryptid Queen on the throne. If what Shuria says is true, and my gut says it is for having lived most of my life with the Kryptids, there is growing discontent among the population. Having the new Queen Rahissa pumping out normal Soldiers has appeased them somewhat, but the grumbling is growing louder among those working in his secret labs.”
“Really?” Legion asked, his face expressing the same surprise I felt. “I thought Workers and Soldiers were blindly obedient to their General and their Queen?”
“They are,” Bane conceded. “But their main duty is to the colony, and the Queen is its embodiment. Aitxa was the perfect Queen. When Khutu executed her to put Pahiven on the throne, it had to have caused a major rift. That Pahiven only pushed out what the nursery Workers would deem abominations would only have deepened the rift. The Workers are not fighters. In truth they are the biggest wimps in the galaxy. But if the colony is threatened, they will become suicidal and defeat their enemies with their numbers instead of with their power.”
“Then we will need to find a way to exploit this and depose the General, once and for all,” I said in a grumbling tone. “Were you able to find out anything about the doppelgangers?”
“According to Herina, the General was in the process of procuring large amounts of lethis spores to replace the loxia treatment,” Victoria said. “Early tests have shown a significant improvement in stabilizing the larvae. But they still haven’t managed to fix the shapeshifting issue that causes them to become deformed when they try to morph. Once they do, it will be a disaster.”
“But I still see a number of problems with that plan,” Wrath argued. “First, they need to get the larvae close enough to the target they will eat. Aren’t they like the size of a piglet? And second, even if they managed to do it, they absorb the physical appearance, not that person’s knowledge.”
“No, to one, and yes to two,” Victoria said with a sad smile. “The idea is not to have them eaten by a larva, but for the larva to mature into a healthy, stable Mimic. Before she defected to our side, Silzi and a few of her sisters had been forced to build extensive databases of knowledge about key people of the Coalition.”
“Fuck me,” I muttered, understanding dawning on me. “They were planning on getting those teens to morph into the target, memorize all the info about them, then infiltrate their houses to take over.”
“Not memorize, but likely download to a chip implanted in their brain,” Bane countered.
“Correct,” Victoria said. “And once they find the target, they eat them to steal their DNA. The good news is that most of the larvae still aren’t able to shapeshift properly, so it will be a while until they sort that out. The second bit of good news is that those who manage to complete the process only live for forty-eight hours after their DNA gets rewritten to that of their victim.”
“The bad news is that we don’t know if the General will take two weeks or two years to figure it out,” Tabitha said. “He already knows what problem he’s trying to solve and will throw every resource at it. We need to nuke that place and all the larvae asap.”
“I tend to agree with Tabitha,” Victoria said somberly. “I think he’s only a matter of weeks away from succeeding, a handful of months at the most.”
A quick glance around the table confirmed everyone was on the same page.
“What of the mutants we brought back?” I asked. “Can they be saved?”
“At this point in time, I have to say no,” Victoria said apologetically. “In the best-case scenario, we might be able to sever their ability to morph, which would allow them to have a semi-normal life. The Mimic Council is having some heated debates about it. But they are aware that whatever their decision, it will need to prove that it will not endanger the safety of the residents of Khepri.”
“Thank you, Victoria, for delivering all this in such a short time,” Legion said with an affectionate smile for the woman who had become our very first sister when she married Doom, and had become a beacon of hope in the Vanguard’s darkest hour.
“You’re welcome, but I can’t say I enjoyed it,” she said, scrunching her freckled face. “Now, I’m off to study the samples from that little gem Chaos brought us. What a lovely girl, that Sabra.”
I puffed out my chest with pride while Legion gave me a mocking stare.
“You declared yourself yet?” he asked me telepathically.
“Of course not. It hasn’t been two weeks.”
“You idiot! You don’t always have to be so by the book!” Legion exclaimed.
“Right, says the dude who waited two weeks before he made his move on Ayana,” I retorted, annoyed. “Even Raven gave Liena two weeks. Am I supposed to show my mate any less regards?”
“True, but I had given her some ‘very clear’ hints of my interest right off the bat,” Legion countered. “Raven did as well—although his Soulcatcher did most of the outing, but that’s a different story. Does Sabra even have the slightest inkling that you’re crazy for her?”
“She could feel my emotions… sometimes,” I said defensively.
Legion rolled his eyes so hard he drew everyone else’s attention.
“All that she probably felt was that you were horny,” Legion replied. “Flirt a little with her to manifest your interest and for her to start fantasizing about you. This way, by the time you make your move, she’ll be receptive because she will have already been contemplating a potential relationship with you. Right now, she probably just thinks you’re some old pervert getting a hard on over a fresh young face.”
My skin burned and my scales on my cheeks and around my neck darkened furiously, drawing some amused chuckles from the others.
“Okay, now I really want to know what you two have been chatting about,” Tabitha said, her eyes flicking back and forth between Legion and me. “I bet it has to do with a certain girl.”
“This meeting is over,” I snarled.
“Oh, my God! It is!” Tabitha exclaimed with the avid expressio
n of someone eager for some juicy gossip.
“We have a mission to plan. I want us on our way in forty-eight hours,” I grumbled, rising to my feet. “You already know the drill. I’ll shortly communicate the list of people participating. Dismissed.”
“You know I’ll make you confess,” Tabitha called out as I walked out the door.
I didn’t respond.
Defiant was standing on my lap, his small hands hanging on to the bone spikes on my shoulders as he practiced flapping his translucent baby bug wings that had finally come out a couple of days ago. Thankfully, he wouldn’t be able to fly for a while yet but strengthening his muscles in the meantime would make it easier when the time came. While summoning his wings came naturally to the boy, remembering how to tuck them away proved a much bigger challenge.
Sitting in the beige leather chair across from me, Tabitha watched her son—my Godson—with a motherly love that always made my hearts melt. I had wished such happiness for her for so long. I had nearly lost hope of ever seeing this softer, happier side of her after so many years of bitterness.
“Legion isn’t happy about you coming on this mission,” I said gently to my ex-Soulcatcher, although my gaze remained locked on her beautiful son. “I’m not either, truth be told, but Bane is dead set on going. Your man needs to stop trying to carry the world on his shoulders.”
Tabitha snorted and flicked her long hair over her shoulder. “Bane can be convinced about sitting out certain missions, but not this one. Not only did he make a promise to Silzi about the Mimics, you know how personal he takes saving any victims of his father’s experiments. This is the last of them before he can find some measure of peace. I can’t deny him that.”
“I fully understand. We all do,” I said in a conceding tone, before pointing at Defiant with my chin. “But this little Dragon can’t lose both his parents.”
“And we have no intentions of keeling over either. Bane and I are planning to work on little hellion number two after this mission, so no dying allowed,” Tabitha said dismissively. “With Varnog and a couple of Scelks tagging along, it should be a breeze. The General will never expect us to attack him so deeply within Kryptid space. With him controlling the throne, he is unchallenged. Even Shuria confirmed that, although the place is crawling with Soldiers, the defenses are basic at best. There’s no need for more.”