part 2 preview

It was a few miles of loud 80’s music and fruitless struggling before the car turned onto the interstate and the Yrlyst-ridden girl finally fell silent. Once the shouting stopped, Zora finally turned down the car radio and put all her focus into driving. She needed to devote her brain power to something right now. Anything. Anything at all to keep the adrenaline from fading away. Right now, if the fire in her veins burned out, her heart might give out from the sheer stress. But she couldn’t let that happen now. Not until they were both safe and out of sight.

Eventually, she heard a feeble voice from the back of the car.

“… What are you going to do with me…?”

“Do you understand what you’ve done, Yrlyst. Do you realize what you’re doing to her.” Her voice, still not her own right now, was full of stone cold fury befitting the skin she wore. “Are you aware of what your commanding officers wanted done with her.”

“She keeps crying… so much crying… they said this would be easy. They said the humans just shut off…”

“… This is your first. Isn’t it. You’ve just been deployed. Whoever had her before, it wasn’t you.”

“N… no. I was… assigned to this body for… a breeding program. The last one, I think they thought leaned into your… human mating rituals too hard. They thought… someone new might do the job better. But she’s crying so much. She didn’t shut off. She’s scared and upset and violated. I didn’t know that… this is what others feel when we…”

For a moment, Zora was silent. She could never be sure if this was a ruse, not for real, but this sounded like… a child. Like they all were, technically. New to this war, and all its horrors. Not yet hardened. But frankly, even if it was a ruse, she had the advantage. She had won this battle, even if she lost everything else. No time to question now. Just go along with it.

“… And what do you believe I am. What do you think I really am underneath the tie and the dress pants.”

“You aren’t her brother. She knows you aren’t.”

“I knew she would. She’s right. I am not Jack Hayward. I’m just some asshole wearing his skin because I can’t wear my own right now. The real thing is probably on his way to the mall right now. But he won’t find us there, will he. He’ll know something’s wrong. He’ll start looking. But don’t you worry, Shana. I promise he’ll be with us soon enough.”

“She’s scared. She doesn’t want you to hurt him.”

“Hurt him? No no no no. I could never. Not in a million years. No, no… my friend is waiting for him there now. She’ll be bringing him to us, once we’re safe. Heh...”

“… is it true, what you said? About the commander...”

“...” A lump formed in her throat as the reality of what she had done began to set in. “Yeah. Yeah it is. She’s dead and burning in Hell for what she’s done to all those people. They both are. I’m still not sure if I regret it.”

“How did you get that close to them? They’re very paranoid...”

“That’s a question best answered once we’re away from prying eyes. If you’ll understand, I need to cover my own ass most of all. I did, technically, commit suicide in order to pull it off.” There came a pause. “You never answered my first question, you know. Are you aware of what’s been done to her?”

“… They did a lot against her will. My first assignment was to… keep doing it. If I said no, I would have died.” Another pause. “But I’m going to die anyway… that’s what they said Betrayers do to us. They slaughter us.”

“Hah. I am no Betrayer. Honestly, fuck their haughty golden asses too. If not for them, maybe I wouldn’t have had to commit a murder. Sure, I wouldn’t be in control of my own skin right now, but… I’m starting to question whether my freedom was worth it. They’re not any better. They’re just less overt about the slavery part. They butter you up, give you a cool power… aaand then you’re indebted to them and you have to take the fall for whatever crimes their guys commit and do whatever they say Or Else. So fuck ‘em. I am no one’s slave.”

“But I’ll still die… I’ll starve to death out here. It’ll be painful...”

“… We’ll cross that bridge when it comes, youngblood. The fact of the matter is, I need to be out of sight of anyone that might see me and recognize me for who I am. If they know I’m alive, both sides will come for me, and I’m not interested in going back into servitude. Heh… be honest. After hearing her in there, neither are you. You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to break her like that. Do you.”

“N… no. No, I don’t… I hate it. This is… horrible. I miss when… when they had us practicing on biotech, instead… but they said the Betrayers can just overtake those, no problem, so we have to use… real races… real people… if they knew I hated this as much as I do I would be broken back down into genetic slurry and tossed back in the brood pits… Defective, they would say…”

“Sounds to me like they’re the defective ones. But what do I know. I’m just some primitive ape on a mudball in some backwater solar system that no one cares about. At least that’s what the Andal’kin say. What a fucking joke, all of it. But it’s a joke that’s cost lives now. And that’s a joke gone too far.”

“… Earth is so full of life...”

This gave Zora another moment of pause. “Yeah… yeah it is.”

“It isn’t like… the homeworld. There’s life everywhere you look… why would they want to squander this…?”

“War doesn’t care about the beauty of nature and the fragility of life. It’ll just crush it underneath its boot if it gets in the way of whatever nebulous enemy is in its sights. Just you wait until we get to where we’re going. I think you’ll be surprised.”

“You seem so certain...”

“I needed to plan for everything, once it was made apparent that I wasn’t just allowed to die in the wreck like I wanted to. At least for a little while. That included a secure destination.”

“… hmmm.”

For another hour, the trip fell silent. The Yrlyst allowed its host to fall asleep in the interim, and soon Zora felt like she was out of sight enough to pull over off the interstate and onto a small dirt road trailing between mighty pines. Here, in the quiet, she released her hold on her loved one’s form before she was locked into it forever, transitioning silently back into her original body.

No one driving all the way out here, on the miles and miles of open, stopless road, would look closely enough to recognize a dead woman driving the car next to them. Most of them didn’t check missing persons listings, or pay enough attention to true crime, to ever know what she had done. There wouldn’t be wanted posters, or search parties, not all the way out here. Because as far as they knew, she had no motive. As far as they knew, it was no murder.

… Murder.

Here, in the silence, it began to sink in. She had killed a woman in cold blood. A woman she had believed was a threat to her and everything she knew, but it was still a murder. They could have talked, in any other circumstance. Maybe if she hadn’t been aggressive, they could have talked on the way to that mall. But that wouldn’t have freed Shana, would it? That wouldn’t have released the woman who felt more like a jaguar. But maybe it could have freed her friend, the one who was coerced. Maybe the scruffy brown boy. Maybe it could have freed others.

No, it couldn’t have, she reasoned with herself. Even if Isra was talked onto her side, it was too late to save Elijah the same way, because of her. It wouldn’t free Roscoe, either. It wouldn’t have saved Shana, and it was likely she would have lost Jack if she hadn’t done what she had. They all would have still been trapped, because Isra didn’t pow around with the only commander. No, they were trapped by that insane, bloodthirsty General who took over the pediatrician. The one who wielded that beam weapon as if it were something as simple as a can of mace. The one with no regard for life.

And so far as she could tell, there was no talking Isra down. Not there. Not on the way to their final destiny.

So why did it hurt so bad? Why did she look at her hands and see phantom blood on them, even though it was the blood of somebody who had willingly enslaved all these people? Maybe it was because all of this stemmed from somebody she thought she loved. Somebody that she maybe once looked at like another parent. A second mother figure, to fill in the gaps where her absent father should have been. Someone who had effectively helped raise her. Love was a sticky, confusing thing like that. It was hard to just stop feeling, and she was starting to feel like she hated herself for taking the life of a parent figure.

...There was no time to sit here and navel gaze, though. She had to keep driving. If she focused on the road, her crimes couldn’t catch up with her.

It was very dark, and the storm had long cleared, before anybody spoke again during that long car ride. In the early morning hours, they had nothing but each other and the occasional street light to keep each other company.

It broke Zora out of a trance to hear that voice from the back of the car, soft and meek.

“… You’re the student. Is that… your real skin?”

“Yeah. Yeah it is. This is me, for real this time.”

“You look so much stronger than the commander said you did.”

“Easy to think anyone looks weak when you’ve taken command of the scariest, most brutally combat trained woman in town. Funny how perspective changes like that, when you’re sitting on the top.”

“But you look just as powerful. Could you not have fought her off in real combat?”

“… No. And mark my words, I’d been trying. I’m too small, too… inexperienced. She’s been in that life for at least as long as I’ve been alive. Longer, maybe. I’d known her role in all this for… a while. In truth, I knew it would come to a head when I first saw her at that pool. I just… was prepared to die fighting her, instead of what actually happened.”

“… I see.”

There was quiet, for another stretch of road.

“… Did he really say I was enchanting?” Zora glanced backward a moment. “You said it when I was pretending to be him. Did he really say that…?”

“Constantly. He would talk about how he worried that he wasn’t… worth your time. How you could have anyone you wanted, why choose him.”

“… really now...” There came a sadness to Zora’s voice. “So… so when he looked at me like that, it wasn’t just wishful thinking. I could have just… nutted up and had him. Maybe had some shred of happiness. Dated a few times, helped my buddy find a real date and not just beat up everyone who did that fake-date thing to him… that is, I guess… before… this. Before everything went to hell… Haaah… well, I hope he can forgive me for this… if Reva pulls it off and gets him where we’re going, we’ll be… seeing him soon enough.”