Ouroboros 2: Before

by Odette C. Bell

  Suddenly she smiled.

  The corners of his lips pricked up at the move. ‘Are you okay?’

  She nodded. ‘I'm fine, and I'm sure the entity will be too. But it's right. We need to hurry. We don't have the luxury of staying in this building and playing it safe. We have to see if there is a dimensional bridge in this time, and if there isn't, we need to find another time gate and travel to another point in history.’

  He opened his mouth to protest. She could see it flickering in his eyes. He didn't want to run the risk, and fair enough, because it was a huge risk. Everything he had listed was a possibility. Knowing nothing about the culture and laws of this time was a perilous combination. If you added to that the fact they were harboring technology light years beyond anything this planet currently had, and that they were both aliens, then you had a lethal combination.

  If either Carson or Nida were found out, they could completely alter this planet's timeline.

  It was such a terrible fact to think about, and yet, she knew the entity was right.

  If it stayed in this realm much longer, it would corrupt. Maybe it had several hours, or several days, or several months, but it didn't matter, at some point it would lose all control, and then . . . it would unleash destruction on an unimaginable scale.

  She shuddered to think about it.

  Carson still had his hand pressed softly into her shoulder, and now he pushed his fingers harder into her arm, holding her in place. ‘What's the matter?’ he asked quickly, his words so snapped, all of the syllables ran together.

  ‘We just need to hurry,’ Nida managed as she patted her hand to her throat, feeling the implant underneath the fabric and taking comfort from it.

  Carson appeared to consider her for a long moment, then he stood back, his hand dropping to his side. ‘Fine, but this is going to be . . .’ he trailed off.

  ‘Dangerous?’ she tried to hold his gaze. ‘But at least we've got each other, right?’ She wasn't entirely sure why she added the last part; it was a particularly embarrassing thing to say, and sounded ridiculously sappy once the words were out.

  But to her surprise, he smiled. ‘Yes, we do, and I'm rapidly finding out that you aren't the worst recruit in 1000 years.’

  ‘You know, that’s possibly the nicest thing someone has ever said to me,’ she grinned around her words.

  ‘Well, there you go,’ he began, then he opened his mouth, readying to add something else. But he stopped. Instead, he cleared his throat. ‘Right, now it's your turn to get some rest.’

  She started to protest.

  He put up a hand and stopped her mid-sentence. ‘This is not negotiable. And I'm not going to put up with any of your protests. I had my chance to sleep, and now it's time you get yours. Plus, there are quite a few things I'm going to need to organize before we go out on the town,’ his voice became indecisive at the end.

  She looked up sharply. ‘You mean you agree we have to go out there?’

  He nodded his head. It was a tense move, and it was clear he would rather be shaking it. ‘There's no other way,’ he clapped a hand over his face and smoothed down one of his eyebrows in a rough move that spoke of stress and tension and the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  ‘Then I should help you,’ she began.

  ‘No,’ he snapped harshly. In a slow move he pointed behind him into the room he had slept in. ‘You are going to get some rest.’

  ‘In a chair? Can't I go to one of the rooms upstairs?’

  ‘Nope, you are going to sleep right in front of me so I can keep my eyes on you . . . which sounds creepy, but it isn't,’ he mumbled quickly.

  She raised both her eyebrows. ‘You know, I can sleep on my own without tripping over and dying. I don't need somebody checking on me every couple of minutes like a newborn baby.’

  He simply replied with a stony stare. ‘Go and get some rest, now.’

  She tried to protest, but he simply shouted her down, and Carson Blake had an impressive set of lungs on him. He also had a very commanding tone that was hard to ignore.

  Eventually she conceded, and walked back into what she assumed was the lounge room.

  Pulling the cushion off the chair, she threw it on the floor and lay down next to it, bunching it up under her head.

  ‘You're going to sleep on the floor?’ he questioned as he walked in behind her.

  ‘I have a delicate neck,’ she pointed out roughly. ‘Now get to work.’

  He laughed, but didn't pull her up for being rude. Instead, he mumbled a simple ‘good night,’ even though it was the middle of the day.

  After shifting around on the floor for a good five minutes trying to get comfortable, finally she found a position that didn't feel as though it would break her back, and Nida closed her eyes.

  It didn't take long for sleep to claim her. In fact, all she had to do was surrender to the growing lethargy that had claimed her limbs.

  Right on the edge of unconsciousness, she felt and she saw it.

  The entity. That dancing, twirling blue light.

  It welcomed her, and she welcomed it.

  Chapter 3

  Carson Blake

  He kept looking up, checking on her as she lay there on the floor, crumpled into a ball.

  Her left hand no longer twitched, and neither did she silently whisper for help as she dreamt some frightful nightmare.

  She simply lay there, and she didn't make a noise, not even a snuffle.

  The mere thought of that word made him bristle.

  He didn't snuffle while he slept. He wasn't a child. He was a grown man. And he felt sure that if he was a snuffler, somebody would have told him by now.

  Remembering that Nida thought it was adorable, immediately made him clear his throat quietly. Or maybe she thought it was cute, or attractive. She'd blushed crimson red at his reaction when she’d suggested that one.

  Because his reaction had been weird. Intense, even. And way out of proportion.

  She’d simply muttered the word, yet for some damn reason his heart had chosen that exact moment to hammer hard and send a burst of nerves rippling through his gut.

  Trying to put all of that out of his mind, he threw himself back into his work.

  This was madness. No, it was beyond madness; it was guaranteed suicide.

  Before Carson had joined the Academy, he'd been a fan of action and adventure holograms, especially ones that involved space travel. He loved to revel in those strange and wonderful stories of people travelling to distant planets and engaging in the strangest of adventures. But once he'd joined the Academy and he realized what space travel was really about, he’d quickly recognized just how farcical those stories had been.

  In the real world, you didn't just land your ship willy-nilly on some random alien world and walk up to the first local, waving and sticking your thumbs up.

  Though most of the Milky Way had been thoroughly explored, if ever a new race were discovered, it would take months of intricate planning before anyone was allowed to make contact. The new alien race would be studied, from their language to their culture, until the United Galactic Coalition knew exactly how to greet them without breaking every single cultural rule and social faux pas.

  These things were delicate, because they were unbelievably complex. Yet here he was, facing the prospect of infiltrating an alien race with only a scanner and a single set of armor to help him.

  Still, Carson did not turn away from the task.

  He drew on every scrap of training he had ever received.

  There were protocols detailing what a United Galactic Coalition member was to do if they ever found themselves stuck on a potentially hostile alien world, far away from help. And now Carson drew on them.

  It took several hours, but slowly he gathered together everything he needed to make a satisfactory disguise.

  Pigments, glue, raw materials he could manufacture into prosthetics, and dye.

  The task wasn't as hard as it sounded; with the help of
his scanner, he could load in the details of what he wanted, and it would assess all of the matter around him, until it found matches to what he was after.

  Then, it was time to synthesize everything together.

  He had a collection of plants from the meadow outside, stone dust, some of the food from those suspicious foil packages, and even some chemicals he had found in the basement of this building.

  Then he sat down, and with the use of the guts of his gun, he set about making passable alien disguises.

  When he was done, he dressed, and finally checked himself out in a mirror.

  He looked . . . well, like an alien. And hopefully, exactly like an alien from this planet.

  He'd done some more digging through whatever data the scanner had been able to glean off the radio and television waves it was receiving.

  As far as he could tell, the inhabitants of this planet referred to themselves as the Vex.

  It was a curious name. Or at least it was once you translated it into the Standard Galactic Dialect.

  The planet was also called Vex.

  And, as he considered himself in the mirror, he realized that he was, quite appropriately, quite vexed.

  This wasn't the first time he had assumed the disguise of another race. Being the commander of the Force meant that he had gone on many strange missions in his time.

  Still, this was the first time he had ever been forced to manufacture a disguise out of little more than a collection of plants and suspicious powders from foil packets.

  Yet thankfully, it was passable.

  At least on the surface.

  It would not be passable on the inside.

  The Vex had green blood.

  And there was nothing that he could do to change the color of his blood. So he just had to hope that over the course of their adventure, neither of them would become injured.

  Which was a very large hope when he realized he was travelling with none other than Nida Harper.

  As he continued to check out his disguise via his reflection, he heard soft footsteps.

  Turning, he saw Nida walk slowly towards him. She looked sleepy, and her eyes were half closed. Yawning, she stretched her arms out, and promptly banged her hand against the wall. She muttered, shook out her knuckles, and tried for a sheepish smile.

  . . . .

  She was an accident on legs, and he was about to take her out onto a completely unknown alien world.

  Suddenly he felt a cold sweat pick up across his brow, and he swallowed hard.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ she said as she neared, her eyes opening wide as she considered his disguise. ‘That's amazing. Hold on, you are Carson, right?’ She asked in a high-pitched voice.

  He stared at her disbelievingly, eventually shaking his head. ‘Yeah, I'm Carson.’

  She looked sheepish again. ‘You've been busy. How long have I been sleeping for?’

  ‘About eight hours,’ he said as he patted one of his neck ridges. It felt suitably strange.

  He had taken his armor off, or at least he had partly taken it off. He’d forced the ablative plating to recede into two metal bands around his wrists. They were thick and heavy, but with a single command, he could activate the armor, and in several seconds, it would grow up over his skin.

  It was unbelievably reassuring to have it there.

  But while he could hide the armor, his gun and the scanner and the device weren’t going to be as easy.

  Nida took a small but still clumsy step towards him. ‘Really, I was out for eight hours?’

  He gestured to the small window behind him. ‘It will be dusk soon. As far as I can tell, this planet has roughly a 28-hour day.’

  ‘I can't believe I wasted so much time,’ she began, looking guilty.

  ‘You rested; you needed to rest. That is not wasting time,’ he said firmly. ‘Plus, it has taken me this long to manufacture our disguises.’

  ‘You made one for me too?’

  He nodded.

  Though he had briefly thought of leaving Nida here whilst he went out and did all the investigating, he quickly realized it was a poor idea. For one, he didn't want to take his eyes off her, and for another, he doubted the entity would let him. And he didn't want to piss it off, because every time he pissed it off, it took control of Nida, and he knew that sapped up the precious little energy the entity had left.

  ‘Wow, I can't believe we’re really going out there,’ she noted, biting her lip as she did.

  It was a cute move, but it couldn't hide how nervous she looked.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ he said carefully as he turned to her fully. ‘And now it's time to get you ready.’

  She looked up at him. It wasn’t a sharp move; in fact, it was small. But the effect it had on him was far out of proportion.

  He felt a little giddy, and, god dammit, it had been years since Carson Blake had felt giddy.

  He was a grown man, for crying out loud, he wasn't a schoolboy.

  Concluding it must have something to do with how tired he was, he cleared his throat properly, and got to work.

  Though he indicated to Nida how to assemble her own disguise, he quickly realized she was a little too clumsy to manage it, and he had to step in.

  Quite close to her.

  In fact, right up against her as he carefully applied prosthetic neck ridges, blue spots, and white dye to her hair.

  It was a lengthy process, and through the whole thing, she simply stood or sat quietly.

  Though her skin didn't glow any more, it was still peculiarly warm.

  Or maybe he was warm, maybe her proximity made him flush with heat—he didn't know. And once again, those were entirely inappropriate thoughts, and he chased them away as soon as they arose.

  Instead, he concentrated until the task was over.

  But no matter how hard he tried to focus on assembling her disguise, he couldn't ignore how . . . tender the entire experience was.

  From dying her hair, to applying blue dots to her cheeks, the physical barriers between them were broken for those few minutes.

  Though she hadn't said a word, that hadn't nullified the intensity of the experience. In fact, in many ways, it had only increased it.

  But finally, it was over, and Carson stood back, pretending he could breathe easily, and chasing away any latent tingle over his fingers by pumping them hard. ‘We are all done,’ he croaked.

  She gently touched her cheek, then ran a hand through her fresh white hair.

  She blinked at him quickly, and her entirely black irises couldn't hide her surprise. ‘Wow,’ she managed as she ran a hand up and down her throat. Turning, she looked at the mirror, and twisted on the spot, that long skirt of hers flaring around her ankles.

  He cleared his throat, and looked away.

  ‘You know, if things don't work out for you as the legendary hero of the Galactic Coalition Academy, you could move into costume design,’ she laughed lightly.

  He liked listening to that laugh.

  Then he caught up to what she had just said. He raised an eyebrow pointedly. ‘Sorry, legendary hero of the Academy?’

  She looked sprung, as if she hadn't intended to say that out loud. ‘I just meant . . . okay, come on, you must know that you are . . . seriously popular,’ she stumbled over her words like she usually stumbled over her feet.

  ‘Seriously popular?’ he questioned again.

  She threw up her hands. ‘You're in the E Club, you're the head of the Force, and every damn recruit worships you.’

  ‘Does that include you?’

  He shouldn't have asked that question, or at least not with that particular tension to his tone.

  She blinked quickly. ‘Every cadet except for me,’ she clarified, her voice squeaking a little. ‘But that's not the point. This is an incredible disguise. How exactly did you learn to do things like this?’ she asked as she leaned towards the mirror, dragging her fingers delicately across the ridges on her cheeks.

  He watched her as she pressed herself
close to the mirror, and it took him a while to realize she’d asked a question. He cleared his throat way too awkwardly. ‘Survival training. I used the scanner to help me figure out what substances around this building I could use to manufacture prosthetics and glue,’ he began.

  She turned and smiled. ‘I know,’ she shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ve been to the Academy too. But the point is, you did a good job. Which I guess isn’t surprising considering you’re Carson Blake,’ she added.

  He couldn't help but laugh again, yet this time he couldn't hide the tight, uneasy edge to it. ‘Why do you keep going on about me as if I'm not in the room?’

  She looked sprung and blinked quickly. ‘Why do you keep pretending that you’re not, well, Carson—’ she began.

  ‘Blake?’ he finished. ‘You keep referring to me as if I’m a thing,’ he challenged.

  She started to blush, and she ran her hand up and down the long black sleeve of her arm. ‘Sorry,’ she stuttered, ‘it's just, well, in the Academy, you have it drummed into your head that Carson Blake is the best of the best.’

  ‘I’m standing right here, and you don't need to refer to me by my full name.’ He was aware that he should just drop it; it was clear she wasn't trying to insult him. She was just stumbling over her words as usual.

  But he couldn't drop it. And maybe the reason he couldn't drop it was that he didn't entirely understand what he was feeling, and that scared him.

  He’d been on multiple missions before, with a whole range of different people, and yet none of them had ever been this intense.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a clearer voice now, ‘don’t mind me.’

  She sounded and looked apologetic.

  Which made him realize he was being a total ass.

  He’d robbed her of a brief moment of levity, something she deserved, considering what had happened to her. An entity from another dimension had possessed her body, she was on a run through time and space, and all he could think of was how awkward it was to be referred to as Carson Blake, the hero of the Galactic Coalition Academy.

  He clutched his neck, and let his stiff, sweaty fingers drag across the muscles. ‘Sorry,’ he managed, ‘I’ve just never been comfortable with . . .’ he trailed off.