by Greg Ramsay
Assessment
Major depression, recurrent. PTSD with psychotic traits resulting from a combination of military service and unknown time fighting while infected with alien mutations. Delusions of grandeur. Potentially suicidal.
Plan
I have advised this patient to remain for secondary assessment. Meanwhile per emergency policy I’m authorized to advise that Utopia Prime deny her asylum. I can’t in good faith, or in my professional capacity, suggest that she wouldn’t inadvertently become a threat to our citizens.
Lia scoffed. A further skim through their feed showed the second psychiatrist simply emailed to second his colleague’s views, followed by acknowledgment of assessments from the Captain. He further commented that, taking the delegate vote into account also, she would be floated within twenty-four hours. Lia’s face contorted in rage. She yelled, slamming her fist into the desk putting a huge hole in it. Lia breathed heavily, her mind awash with emotion before she broke into a fit of angry sobbing. Eventually she gathered herself, then headed for the alien vessel.
Its display seemed to indicate coordinates for a nearby planet with a different name than she knew – Thislagar – Earth. Smiling slightly, she hit a switch and the ship took off. Somehow she arrived just outside the Earth’s atmosphere in less than half the time it took their pod to get to Utopia Prime. Guess the obsolete species was first to fall. If we’d gone to war with them we would’ve lost, Lia thought to herself, amazed just how far behind humanity was. With little intervention on her part the ship easily navigated down to the planet’s surface with astonishing silence. Lia found herself parked in what used to be a city centre.
Chapter 8 – Prelude
Skyscrapers lined the ground like jagged landing pads. The same strange exit tunnel that burrowed its way through Utopia Prime launched automatically. Glancing over her command display, Lia could see the ship was picking up a foreign broadcast. She selected it. A series of unintelligible garbles broadcast from nonvisible speakers. Then in a matter of moments the sound became a voice.
“This is Dr. James Barton. If you’re reading this, my coordinates will follow. Come to me and I’ll ensure your safety,” James’ voice said before crackling into nothing. Instinctively Lia’s mouth emitted a small sound. The ship took off instantly, tracking the signal all the way to the scene of the crash.
Lia could see fragments of his pod all over the ground like the tail of a comet had been discarded piece by piece. James himself was easily dispatching a horde of shifted no doubt drawn by his impact. Upon seeing him, Lia’s heart jumped with joy. Finally she was no longer alone. Then she looked to the shifted. Her entire body suddenly felt ablaze with rage. With impossible speed she raced into the horde, cutting down those too close to him viciously. She roared at any shifted that tried to cut him. “You want a goddess of death, here I am!” she said powerfully, before her wings burst from her armour, dismembering and repulsing anything too close. She slammed her katana into the ground, using it as a medium to launch a tendril storm underground that burst up into the remaining shifted. Their black bodies glinted in the hot sun as they hung suspended in midair still fighting, impaled like a grotesque natural crucifixion. In mere seconds her tendrils penetrated, dismembered, and consumed most of them, leaving only a few.
“I had that!” James said slightly annoyed. He was overjoyed to see her, but his confusion at her arrival was evident in his expression. He took a breath, raising his finger like he always did before he launched into one of his all-important rambles. She cut him off with an abrupt punch to the face.
“Armour off, now!” Shocked, his body complied instantly.
“Why?!” he demanded, standing there nude. Retracting her own armour, Lia tripped him hard onto his back before mounting him quickly.
“Fuck you,” she said aggressively in response. She did exactly that, right there amongst the wreckage, while dying shifted hung in the distance. Once satisfied, she casually pointed to the remaining shifted. “There’s your dinner,” she said casually before silently re-arming and walking away. James laid there resting a moment, unsure what just happened. After a while he got up, ate what she left for him and jogged up to her.
“Okay, first why are you here instead of on UP? Second where did you get ... that?” he said pointing to her ship, “And third, since when do you have badass wings?”
“Hi honey, so glad you’re alive; let’s just relax for a while,” Lia mumbled, imitating his voice sarcastically under her breath. James sighed with a big goofy grin on his face. Lia’s energetic demeanor suddenly shifted focus. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it; they liked me. So much they locked me up for days after you got tossed out, then arbitrarily decided I was a literal psychopath that was a danger to all of humanity,” she exclaimed, her expression saddened a moment but she continued unfalteringly, “but before they could toss me out like the worthless used up killer psycho I am, Tory busted me outta jail. All so I could fight shape-shifting splooge monsters, but not be able to save ANYONE... Not even your kooky black replacement!”
Her false happy energy devolved into tearful laughter. James just stared in surprise, unable to say anything. After a moment she took a deep breath, failing to hold back her pain. “I...killed everyone, James... every, last fucking one. Human, alien, shifted. They’re ALL dead because of ME!” She stopped to try and get air through her tears while James stood there full armoured, starting to cry himself. “I’d say we’re the last humans left, but thanks to those aliens, there’s no human left in me!” she said in pained rage “I’m just a warped, psychotic, killer monstrosity!” she said sadly before falling to her knees, bursting into a bout of psychotic laughter. James tried to approach her, mentally reeling, trying to take everything in. Lia used her wings to force him back before enshrouding herself with them. “If anything tries to take you away from me again, or so much as look at you funny I’ll destroy them! And If you ever leave me, I’LL KILL YOU!” Lia yelled at him, growling through her mask.
“Lia. . .” James started to say. Lia roared unlike nothing he’d ever heard before. Her wings left a hurricane of dust in her wake as she suddenly launched into the sky. She flew for kilometres to the nearest city, its tall crumbling buildings poking out like straws through the dense putrid smog of pollution. Lia bellowed full-force with her new alien voice. With her back to the sun she looked like a deity, one with followers gathering by the second. A single guttural eerie sound radiated from her mouth, setting every shifted into a murderous frenzy. She watched with sick satisfaction as they mercilessly destroyed each other, leaving only the strongest alphas to absorb the fallen. She forced one alpha to consume the others, all to create a super monster. Like an appraiser of fine art, she inspected her newest masterpiece. She was quickly bored so she casually swung her sword at it. The wave of power it fired into the alpha left the entire city as nothing more than a crater. Lia then returned to James, her inner pain not the least bit sated.
“That was quick!” James remarked, “Mind telling me what’s going on? I get things went bad on UP. I get they made you question yourself... but what’s this about Tory and aliens?!” James asked with a violent aggression he hadn’t intended.
“Since I consumed her, my completely sane brain can apparently resurrect her with tendrils for a nice chat,” Lia said sarcastically, like it was old news. James knew she wasn’t lying, but was just as lost as him. He did his best to suppress the sudden anger he felt at Tory’s name being brought up. “You heard that loud cry, didn’t you? The guttural sound? Started to feel angry, right?” Lia asked knowingly.
“Yes!” James said with a hint of anger. Her questioning seemed to kill the rush of emotion.
“Turns out when you consume a splooge monster you inherit their random ass ability to control shifted, including a hybrid like us. Didn’t realize it could affect you at this range, but I guess this means I own ya even more than a wedding ring implies!” Lia said with a joking cheerful tone. James looked at her with a mix of sh
ock and horror that he dared not elaborate on. She’d seriously just told him she could not only reconstitute their child, but could control any shifted she wanted with a sound.
Sensing his confusion, Lia continued, “Oh, and I no longer need to breathe or eat, can survive in the vacuum of space, and can draw limitless power from any energy including solar radiation.” She thought back to how she’d created a localized shifted war out of boredom. “Chadwick was right, I am a goddess of death.”
“Who the hell is Chadwick?” James asked suddenly, no longer hiding his exasperation.
“My brother in craziness. A fast friend, badass enough to kill shifted without explanation. You’d like him, he convinced me you were right about the whole transcending beyond humanity BS.” Lia said.
“Okay...So could you ... revive Tory right now then?” he asked, his scientific curiosity outweighing his growing confusion and concern. Tory, come see Daddy! Lia thought. Automatically tendrils surged from her like before, alive with pulses of her crimson willpower. James watched in astonished horror as his beautiful daughter was remoulded in front of him by a living mass of tendrils. In mere seconds she stood there, black and oozing, but real. Lia focused harder and she became fully human, her only tie being the tendrils coming from her feet. Lia willed more energy into her before severing that bond, once more allowing her autonomy.
“Hi Daddy!” Tory exclaimed, just like she did as a little girl when he’d been at work for days then finally came home. She ran straight into James’ tearful embrace, doing her best to comfort him. “I missed you,” she said.
“I missed you too, baby. I’m sorry I couldn’t make you better,” he said, suppressing his regretful tone to not worry her.
“It’s okay. Gotta go, bye!” Tory said casually then disintegrated into dust in his arms.
“What is it they say; our loved ones live on inside of us?” Lia remarked rhetorically. James looked at her in horrified amazement, completely at a loss for words.
“You weren’t making any of it up...” he said still reeling.
“No, we’re all that’s left,” Lia said sadly.
Distraught, James wordlessly jogged away into her alien vessel. Lia knew he was looking for something to distract him. For a moment she felt only power; her brain couldn’t keep up with her vastly overpowering emotional state for the time being. James suddenly called for her. She shocked him by instantly being there.
“What does this mean?” he said, indicating vibrant alerts flashing all over the command console. Lia scrutinized it for a moment.
“It seems this ship’s been AWOL long enough for authorities to be notified. Not only that, thanks to the crap that alien bastard covered everybody in, they appear to know what I look like. You’ll be proud to know I’m public enemy number one,” she said casually, her face adorned with a deadly smirk. James’ mind was erratic. He desperately wished anything made sense so he could talk some sense into her.
“So what now?!” he asked.
“War,” she said menacingly, her smile growing.
Chapter 9 - Invasion
At a loss for words, James plopped himself down in what vaguely resembled a seat. She hit some buttons on the display and the massive ship came alive, its slick grey exterior shining in the sun. A large circular indentation protruding from the bottom of the ship scraped some of James’ garbage as they launched. Shaken, James noticed the interior was mostly open concept like Utopia Prime’s bridge with multiple utilitarian holograph-like displays, a few manual switches, and a large segmented compartment in the back which held the boarding ramp.
“What do you plan on doing?” he asked as she flew confidently.
“Fill the rear deck with conscripts,” she replied like she did it once a week.
Quickly they arrived at another city. Lia repeated her summoning routine, this time keeping about thirty of the strongest alphas which she unceremoniously marched right into the ship, with just a windowed bulkhead between them and James. To his amazement when she let out some impossible sounds they simply crouched on all fours, digging in with their claws, then remained perfectly still. Lia was careful to focus her command on the shifted since she’d learned from her mistake with James. Minutes later she returned to the cockpit.
“That’s all?” James asked.
“A smaller highly capable force has better damage potential in guerrilla style fighting than a large one. We won’t be able to match them in numbers so we have to focus our efforts on quick surgical strikes,” Lia replied calmly.
“Against what exactly?” James asked frustrated.
“Against the dumbass mothership that’s broadcasting its position as well as our own to all ships,” Lia said.
“An obvious trap,” James said.
“Sure, if they aren’t being overly cocky. They may not know they can’t control me anymore,” Lia said.
“What about me?” James asked seriously as they smoothly put distance between themselves and Earth.
“I’ll fix that,” Lia said calmly, keenly eyeing alien vessels that suddenly warped in. To her surprise they completely bypassed her ship, instead quickly entering Earth’s atmosphere.
“They’re looking for more slaves!” Lia exclaimed, enraged. “I won’t let them use humans anymore,” she seethed to herself before abandoning her post.
She deftly disengaged an outer door, leaving James in the sealed cockpit before launching herself into space. She watched angrily as increasing numbers of ships invaded Earth. A small portion of her power automatically raged through her armour to keep it mobile in the cold of space, voiding the need for layer shedding. Lia calmly spread her lethal wings, super-charging on solar radiation. She formed her kynari into a katana within a raging vortex of her willpower. This time the energy that ran down the run of the blade was a brighter crimson. She turned to glare at the gathering mass of ships, hoping they were watching. If these bastards want me dead, they can do it themselves! she thought spitefully. Whether she was fated to die in the coming war was uncertain. All Lia knew was that no matter what the outcome, she was taking the violated planet with her. That way the alien scum couldn’t abuse it or its inhabitants any further. After a few moments, she felt like her blade was ready to destroy a galaxy. Bright crimson power raged out in multiple massive waves as she swung her blade deftly. Before even one could make its way to Earth, she swung her blade forward from her forehead to her feet.
“RELEASE!” she roared as her blade arced forward, channelling the maximum force of her will. Her blade complied, launching a final immeasurable wave of power. Lia’s first energy wave sliced clean through the desecrated atmosphere. It raged down, piercing clouds before smashing violently into everything below with incalculable devastation. Countless cities were erased instantly. Multiple enemy vessels miles apart were easily obliterated by her crimson vengeance. Unhindered, her power raged straight through the ground, destabilizing tectonic plates, and causing natural disasters beyond human scale. Lia’s first energy wave finally dissipated with amazing explosive power after slicing straight through to Earth’s core. She watched as the entire planet quaked, shaking itself to pieces.
Parts of Earth were ripped free by the sheer slicing force of her other energy waves. Ripped off segments crashed back into the planet due to its gravitational pull. The violence of those impacts alone caused multiple extinction level events; each far worse than anything recorded in history. Any life that survived thus far was brutally eliminated. Every blow Lia dealt only amplified the overwhelming damage wrought on the dying planet. Lia’s final devastating attack made Earth’s remains explode as its energy radiated outward from within. All that was left of the planet was burning shrapnel and dust. Jagged asteroids cloaked in cremated remains flew through space, serving as a warning to her enemies not to underestimate her power.
Lia’s body was weakened slightly, despite constant recharge from the sun. She let herself gradually drift backward toward her ship while thinking her final goodbyes to her home pl
anet. Turning away slowly, she took stock of her enemies’ reaction –– they were running away. She laughed like a conquering hero at the few remaining alien vessels as they hastily disappeared through wormholes. Feeling somewhat tired but accomplished, Lia boarded her ship eager to see James’ reaction. He stood there wide-eyed like she’d just beat his mother.
“Your friend was right; you are a goddess of death,” he said in a mixture of amazement and mournfulness that she expected.
“It’s better this way, now those disgusting fucks can’t use humans, mutated or not, as slaves.” she said calmly.
“How does that make us any better? Did you forget the small army of alphas in the back?” he said angrily.
“They now have a chance to avenge who they were... what they cared about! After that I’ll put them out of their misery myself,” Lia said as if she’d given them a higher cause.
“And then what?! You destroyed the whole fucking planet! Where are we gonna live?” James asked, becoming increasingly agitated with her demeanor.
“You and I both know there are other liveable planets like Earth,” she said argumentatively.
“So what, you just sacrificed a whole planet to show off cuz you have spares?” James asked sarcastically.
“This was the most efficient way to clean up your apocalypse. Besides, that overwhelming show of force was highly effective against the enemy. You were the one worried we wouldn’t be strong enough to win!” Lia argued angrily.