Chapter Thirteen: Time Flies When You're Being Held Prisoner

Chapter Thirteen

Time wasn’t a factor in my existence, at least not one I could keep track of. Even when I had a watch, which I didn’t at the moment, I had trouble being prudent. Fortunately, there wasn’t anywhere I had to be at any specific time.

Still though, it would have been nice to know how long I’d been submerged next to Aidyn. Up until the first time I’d fallen asleep since joining her, I watched my blood dance and curl around our bodies.

To my horror, Aidyn was completely unresponsive every time I tried interacting with her. I could poke her, shake her, and tug on her hair yet each action had no effect. Thus, when I woke up and found her thumbs keeping pressure on my wrists, I was shocked.

Discovering her alert enough to attempt stopping my bleeding encouraged me but I quickly slumped back to my former torpor when my efforts to rouse her continued to be in vain.

The second time I fell asleep, I woke up and Aidyn wasn’t holding my forearms anymore although I didn’t notice immediately because the bleeding had stopped. My wrists were far from healed but it appeared a transparent film had sealed the two slits. Shrugging aside the inexplicable saran wrap, I swam as far as my oxygen tube let me; Aidyn’s disappearance was far from desirable. After praying for her safety, I settled down waiting for the Catrions to inevitably retrieve me.

When they finally did come get me, I had been through six or seven cycles of sleep and wake. Unlike the other times the Catrions pulled me out of the tank, this time I didn’t struggle. Disheartened from Aidyn’s absence, delirious from my own blend of emotions, and dizzy from blood loss, I barely had the strength to move my head, much less fight the Catrions.

Heck, I couldn’t even bring myself to count the number of right and left turns back to the room; as such, the Catrions returned me there without consequence.

While mulling in my misery, a memory resurfaced; Victor would be coming to check on me. Since my every movement drained me, the pace at which I redressed wasn’t exactly hasty.

As expected, they were right where I’d left them, though not in the disarray I’d left them in. Instead of being bunched up and abandoned in the heat of the moment, my few clothes were neatly folded and had actually multiplied three times since I’d been gone. Sleeping atop the two short piles of clothes bound to the floor by a half-inch strip of elastic was a sheening metal bar that made my heart skip a beat.

There, in that bench, was a short katana engraved with five Japanese symbols; my father had told me years earlier what they meant, “Evil’s Killer.”

Confident I was dreaming, I stared at the much-needed gift from Victor. Tentatively, my tail inched towards my father’s weapon; I couldn’t believe my eyes until the cool steel sent goosebumps up my spine.

Feeling liberated, I no longer felt obligated to sit tight in my makeshift cell. Though I was tired, my possession of a sword gave me an excuse to ignore my fatigue in exchange for sweet independence. Hence, I climbed into the ventilation duct Victor had come through, hoping to find him somewhere nearby.

Without hesitation, I shimmied into the hole, wiggling off to the left; to the right was an intersection with paths diverging in several different directions and angles while to the left was a downward sloping tunnel continuing for several hundred feet. Opting for simplicity, I went left.

I expected the ventilation duct to be cramped yet I was pleasantly surprised. The shaft was far from roomy, but it was wide enough to fit comfortably. I certainly couldn’t turn around in the tunnel, but I wasn’t feeling claustrophobic or anything like that.

Scrawled on the wall with what appeared to be a permanent marker was my name and arrow pointing in the direction I’d just came. Encouraged, I continued forward, hoping for Victor to be around the next bend.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find Victor after that turn yet I found evidence he’d been there. Written in his messy handwriting was another directional message. This one seemed to be a crudely-drawn map, using the wall it was written on as a reference point. With many two-inch long fingers on the bottom of the line representing “this wall,” there were several different names on a slight angle. Most of the names were unfamiliar to me, although in the closest finger to the side I’d entered from, I recognized the names of Aidyn, Nellya, and Alaric. Sadly, I didn’t see Leroy’s name anywhere on the simple map.

Thinking Victor might be with friends and concluding that even if he wasn’t, I wanted to speak to our friends, I went looking for what I assumed was the first room in the corridor ahead of me. Not surprisingly, I found the room with relative ease.

The first open air vent I discovered since leaving my own room contained one of the three specified people. Deep down, as I approached, I hoped to see Nellya and more than that, Aidyn. Sadly, only Alaric was there to greet me and it wasn’t exactly a warm welcome.

“Well look who it is,” he jeered. “It’s certainly a different look than the last time I saw you!”

Not sure on his exact meaning, I ignored the comment.

“Where is everybody?” I asked, realizing just how much of a challenge forgetting what a stark-naked Alaric looked like was.

“How should I know?” Alaric retorted and folded his arms over his chest, sitting in shorts at the intersection of two walls. “You’re the only one I’ve seen lately, and for once, it wasn’t entirely unbearable.”

Disgusted, I fought off an inexplicable urge to bash Alaric’s face in with the hilt of my sword. “Do yourself a favor and shut your mouth before you lose your teeth.”

Remembering how aroused Alaric had been in the tank almost made me follow through with my empty threat, regardless of whether or not Alaric shut up.

“Where’s Victor?”

Alaric shrugged. “He doesn’t come by here much anymore.” Trying to straighten his uncombed hair, Alaric pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “For all I know, he’s playing solitaire in some obscure corner of this ship.”

I grimaced. “No idea when he’ll be back?”

He shook his head so I pulled myself back into the air vent to return to my room in the off chance Victor showed up there.

“Hey,” Alaric;s tone changed from the biting cynicism he’d had moments earlier. “We’ve got an hour left until the deadline is up.”

I stopped and looked back; he tapped a digital watch on his arm and smiled a genuine display of his humanity. This was the part of Alaric that I didn’t mind so much, however rare it surfaced. It was the part of him that behaved more like a human being than a snot-faced roach. For this tiny fraction of his personality, I found within me the strength to forgive his sick innuendoes, snide remarks, and obnoxious mannerisms.

Leaving Alaric, I resumed my exploration of the ductwork, contemplating what Alaric had just shared. The possibility of an entire week having past escaped my understanding; according to my internal time clock, only an evening had passed at most. My guess was so far from the truth I kind of wanted to believe Alaric was lying or didn’t know what he was talking about. But he’d had a watch and had spoken with sincerity, so I couldn’t very easily dismiss his words.

True, I’d never had any grasp of time since the Catrions had captured us, but I liked to think my internal clock was more accurate than that. Even if my mental clock wasn’t however, my body had another way to keep time, one that should have been reliable. If memory served correctly, I should have started my period at the beginning of the past week, assuming of course we’d only been held by the Catrions for about seven days.

Because I hadn’t yet started my period, I saw only two explanations for what was happening. The simpler of the two was that Alaric had to be lying; the other option was that the Catrions had done something that stopped my cycle.

I didn’t like to think about it.

Nearly back to my cell, I didn’t bother looking ahead of me while crawling; it strained my neck too much. Besides, it wasn’t like I had any intersections to worry about—getting through the air duct was pretty straightforward. A few feet from the entrance to my room however, I regretted my lack of focus.

“Thunk.”

“Ow!”

“What the-?!”

Victor and I both cried out in startled agony as our heads bonked together.

Once we’d managed to recover from our wounded noggins, both of us were thrilled to see each other. Victor could barely contain his excitement as he helped me slide through the airvent into my room. I felt as if we had just reunited at some obscure social gathering and were carrying on about each other’s families, jobs, and lives in general despite not having been in contact for months.

I didn’t find a place to get comfortable when I was back in my cell because I craved attention and companionship from Victor. Opting to pluck Victor from the hole in the wall rather than wait for him to get out on his own, I tugged on his wrists. His knobbly shoulders almost snagged the sides of the tight opening, but I braced my feet against the wall and pulled harder. Poor Victor yelped in response to my lack of patience.

“Hey!” He cried in panic, his eyes darting to the narrowing gap on either side of him. “What’re you doin’?!”

Fortunately for Victor’s sake, I had completely extracted him without incident before he even completed his question.

“It’s so good to see you!”

And then it dawned on him just how overdue this meeting was; he might also have been expressing relief over the unlikelihood of his skin raking across the rough edges of the hole for the air vent.

“Préyhen! You’re back!” He enthused, “I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

Our hug came so suddenly, it was like Victor and I were made of ferrous metals.

“Weeks?” I wondered, hoping it wasn’t another example of my menstrual cycle being out of whack. Surely Victor’s use of the word was just a hyperbolized mark of affection or something. “It hasn’t been that long, has it?”

“I’m afraid it has,” Victor’s hands slid off my upper back and stopped on my hips; I leaned back to stare him in the eye as he started speaking again.

“I found a watch the day you were taken again, and it’s been almost a month since I’ve seen you.” A tear formed in his left eye and his voice became croaky; both details he tried to hide.

“I thought something had happened.”

Feeling sorely missed, I leaned on his chest and realized my tail was stroking his back. “I’m still here,” I whispered, almost afraid he’d heard me.

“It’s been three months since we were captured.”

I gasped. “Victor, I’m sorry—this is all my fault. We wouldn’t be here if it weren;t for me and my own stupidity.”

He kissed my forehead. Those moist lips alone made me want to open the flood gates and release a surge of wet cold tears.

“It’s not all your fault,” He objected; he wasn’t making me feel any less responsible. “We’re all to blame, really.”

His ‘really’ sounded more doubtful than it did reassuring.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter much anyways,” Victor lifted my chin so he could see my face.

Not wanting to destroy Victor’s spirit I feigned a smile. He saw right through it and cocked his head to the side, frowning. The real sign of our friendship however came when he stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes; he knew I couldn’t resist laughing at that.

After wiping a tear from my eye, I appreciated more at that moment than any other how strong our bond was. Oblivious to the snake constricting either of our movements, I marveled at how intoxicating Victor’s eyes were. It was as if I were watching the fondest of our childhood memories play back in those glassy orbs. The allure of those happier days drew me in; I needed a closer inspection to be sure the nostalgia I saw was real.

As I leaned in, a quiet sense of absolute contentedness exploded in my chest. My chest was hollow, I knew, because my heart had abandoned my rib cage and was pounding away at my eardrums. The discovery that the joy framed by Victor’s eyelids was in fact real came after a few anxious moments.

Enlightened, I closed my eyes and inhaled the delicate smell of enrapturement; it smelled like the sound of trickling water.

“Attention unidentified vessel, this is Captain Jamieson of the E.S. Pheonix Ash in regards to the transmission sent exactly one Earth week ago,” The intercom boomed Victor and I flew apart just before tasting each other’s lips.

“From this point henceforth, due to your noncompliance with the previous demands, your vessel is liable to be boarded at any time and is subject to immediate search and seizure upon arrival at the nearest checkpoint. Other consequent charges that may be brought against your vessel and crew, including but not limited to the taking of hostages, will result in further penalties.”

The intercom snapped off.

Victor was overjoyed, ecstatic, and bubbly.

“Did you hear that?! ‘The taking of hostages will result in further penalties!’ They know!”

I shook my head, unable to share in Victor’s enthusiasm. “I don’t think the Catrions care about further penalties.”

“Oh,” I’d killed his excitement instantly. “I guess you’re right.”

The intercom cut on again, only this time, it didn’t echo through the whole ship; it sounded as if it were in this one room alone.

“Préyhen Valerie Griffin, this is your uncle,” Though the volume of the person speaking was significantly less than it had been seconds earlier, the voice remained the same. “I’m coming for you.”

Chapter Twelve: The Savior's Voice

Chapter Twelve

As a twelve-year-old, I had been a feisty headache to my elders. Like most children that age, I had had a potty mouth. My all-time favorite method of greeting someone back then was sticking my tongue out as far as it would go. I even got into fights.

There was one scrap, during one of my dad’s deployments, which got me in massive trouble with my mom. There had been a boy named Leon who was about the same age as me; the reason my fist kissed his jaw was his obnoxious attitude. I could ignore his bullying antics but his idiotic recital of a poem about a man from Nantuckett was too much.

There hadn’t really been any dialogue between he and I before I hit him. I simply slugged him so he’d shut up. The tactic was crude but effective, even though it resulted in me getting punched back.

In the middle of the dusty schoolyard, the scuffle was broken up just before I would’ve come out on top; my mother screamed at me as Leon’s body turned upside-down, suspended by his ankles from my tail.

Although it had been a long time since I was twelve, I acted no differently, except Leon was a Catrion. Three of them to be exact.

I had sensed that Cations were drawing close to me, and for some odd reason, I knew they were coming to take me back to the tank of liquid I had been in before. Confident in my premonition, I flung my clothes into the bench storage area; it was only for Victor’s sake that I even bothered undressing. Personally, I didn’t care if the Catrions found me naked or not, but they’d wonder where I’d found them, thus putting Victor in danger of being discovered.

Barely able to rid myself of the grungy garments I had on, I found myself shocked to be right about the approach of the Catrions. Nervous and apprehensive, I sat there as the three Catrions entered my cell. Instinct suggested that the Catrions weren’t thrilled to be coming for me; once I even thought I had an out of body experience because I glimpsed a figure whose shape and surroundings were not unlike my own. That experience came with a shudder of pain and the realization the tailed figure in the vision was a much younger version of my father on a much older ship.

The Catrions approached me with caution evident in their gate. I couldn’t say what inspired my attack, but whatever it was, it sure motivated me.

Using their own momentum against them, I kicked off from the wall behind me. Our collision happened in less than a second. Oiginally I had aimed for the center Catrion so that the other two would be well within my reach. Unfortunately however, I had misjudged the rate at which the Catrions were moving and hence I ended up hitting the one on the far right. The other two Catrions froze, unsure of what to do; again I saw my father imprisoned on a spaceship at somepoint in the past.

Pink ooze trickled from the first Catrion and a shrill cry hammered the inside of my head. Ignoring the headache-inducing racket, I turned on the nearest Catrion. While that one was held in a stiff bear hug, the last Catrion placed one of its arms on the wall I’d kicked off from and it tried to back away from me as far as possible. Had my adrenaline not been pumping to the extent it was, my tails reaction would have stunned me.

One vertebrae popped beneath my coccyx as my tail jerked between my legs and around the thorax region of Catrion-number-three. For the last time, the image of my father accompanied by the quiver of pain associated with that scene flashed in my mind; my tail paid no attention to the surreal sensation. If it had, I felt the violent spasm my tail produced next might have been rude to the Catrion—well, ruder than it already was.

With the Catrion’s bottom section grasped tightly, my tail slammed the Catrion into the intersection of the floor and adjacent wall. The sides of the Catrion’s head hinged inwards, molding to the pointed shape of the corner.

Meanwhile, the first Catrion I’d attacked sidled out of the room, despite its cracked midsection, and returned seconds later with an orange Biosphere.

In a panic, I scrambled to get out of the room but my efforts were in vain. My attempt to escape only trapped me in the thick noxious fumes just released. Sneezing several times in rapid succession, I surrendered to the numbness enveloping every muscle of my body.

Even though I couldn’t move, I remained conscious while more Catrions came to carry me to wherever they needed me to be. Because my eyes were as immobile as the rest of my body, I couldn’t really map out the way to the new room I was in.

A shudder trickled up my spine as the Catrions lowered my feet into an icy, gelatinous fluid; it was the same stuff I’d been in before reuniting with Victor. While submerging me, they shoved an oxygen tube up my nose and spun me inside the tank so that my back faced the entrance.

Before they’d gotten me in my final position, I thought I saw a pair of wings. Actually, I was sure of it.

The sight disturbed me.

Once in the liquid, I was left to my thoughts. At first, I felt guilty about the two bald wings I glimpsed. More than that though, I thought about Victor and what he would do when he discovered I wasn’t where I had been. In all honesty, I prayed Victor would be okay and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

Eventually, I regained control of my body. As before, I had a limited spectrum of movement but I could look around as much as I liked.

Just as Alaric had been next to me, I found two beings naked and neighboring me. One of them was the same sex as me and the other one, though male, I’d changed the diapers of years earlier so it was only a matter of dignity.

Although seeing both humans nauseated me, Leroy’s confirmed presence yanked my gut out of my body like a lure out of the water on a fishing rod. Wanting to force Leroy out of my mind, I turned my back to him (letting my tail find his hand) and stared at the female on my right.

Positioned clumsily, her body pointed away from my own. Recognizing her would have been hard enough if all I had to go upon was the smooth contour of her left shoulder blade, and the slight pimple behind her ear, but the relative position of her body to mine wasn’t normal. To recognize her, I had to deal with a hundred-and-ten-degree tilt; the clearest part of her body I saw was her upper back, ribcage, and underarm.

Her muddled blond hair hung motionless in an untrimmed bush encapsuling her head. Suspended in the liquid as still as her hair were her arms; she probably hadn’t moved since the Catrions put her there.

The speck of a mole on her right flank looked too familiar to me for this unconscious girl to be a complete stranger. Dwelling on the shape and position of her mole, I thought about who I knew with one like it.

At my last birthday party, Nellya and Victor had spent the night at my house. My mom had arranged it so we’d had plenty of activities to keep us occupied; she’d pulled some strings and gotten us a few movies and four six packs of fruit-flavored soda imported from Mars. Meanwhile, Mrs. Borealis had baked a triple batch of snickerdoodles for us. Due to the cookie inspired sugar high, each of us had been relatively hyper. As such, it came as no surprise when a soda can exploded after a fierce shaking. The violent grape explosion peppered Nellya’s sunflower yellow tee shirt in chilled purple dots

In response to the unwanted graffiti polka dots, Nellya immediately balled up her shirt, trying to squeeze the offending liquid out before the inevitable stains set in. Two inches beneath her shirt, I’d seen that very same shaped mole.

It was Nellya!

“This one is different,” A voice in my head speculated, preventing me from brooding over my most recent discovery; as a result, I spaced out, concentrating on the conversation at hand.

As if I were watching a video clip, I watched one of my recent treks through the corridors, carried by multiple Catrions. “Are you referring to the Desert Arachnid?”

“No,” Back at the scene of Mr. Dabahov’s demise, Aidyn twirled her make-shift bow staff so fast she might as well have been a helicopter. “This one.”

I felt like there was an agreement from the second voice, sort of like a nod.

“I tried modifying it like the others but the organism terminally rejected my changes.” The first voice explained. “I suspect the best thing to do is to start again from scratch. It’s a shame that the only humans available are postnatal.”

“Yes, postnatal humans are difficult to modify however it is doable.” The second voice said; I was reminded of the little engine that could. “I have always enjoyed the challenge of postnatal failures.”

“Challeng? Why don’t you sustain it then!” Voice number one took offence to voice number two’s statement.

“I would prefer not to assume ownership of your incompetence, however there is a way to preserve the life of your specimen.” Voice number two was high-strung, arrogant, and overtly proud.

“Can you support this claim? I think not!”

“You dare to mock me? That only evidences your mediocrity!” Voice number two laughed, sort of. “It is simple really; the mere act of blending your living failure with a genetically perfect specimen would arrest the terminal rejection of your failure.”

“Now you’re the one mocking!” Voice one seemed annoyed, as if by sarcasm. “It is not like we have the Animal in capacity!”

“Then, perhaps, you should let your failure cease to exist.”

My thoughts buzzed so chaotically, my mind somehow blocked me from overhearing any more of the conversation.

Aidyn was in danger, that I was fairly sure of. Although it was entirely possible I’d imagined the entire conversation and I hadn’t just heard two Catrions debating the effects of a failed experiment involving Aidyn, I couldn’t let myself accept such a possibility. A gut instinct convinced me Aidyn needed help or she was going to die; one of those Catrions had the ability to stop her from dying.

If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Aidyn’s presumed fate, I would have noticed Leroy and Nellyas’ absence.

As much as I would’ve liked to claim otherwise, my Aidyn-associated anxiety had nothing to do with me leaving the slimy fluid I was in; I’d had no choice in the matter.

Yet again, the Catrions plucked me from my gooey prison; there seemed to be no order or reason or motive for incessantly moving me. This time, they neglected to remove the oxygen tube from my nose, causing it to sting my nostrils and make my eyes water as it yanked out and splashed back into the clear liquid. As I emerged from the liquid, half-pint globules of the stuff floated out of the tank and coalesced around the room.

The instant I was free of the icy snot, I snapped out of prisoner mode; I could move and move I did.

Snatching the twiggy appendages of both Catrions holding me, I clapped my captors together. To my dismay, the black rubbery armor on these two Catrions bounced them off each other. Not deterred, I brought them back together.

“Where is she?!” Feeling particularly intimidating, I shook the Catrions and spat out my next demand; the Catrion-esque squeals I heard boosted my confidence significantly.

“Where the,” My daddy taught me not to swear, but dramatizing the intensity of the moment couldn’t hurt. “Is Aidyn?!”

The Catrions smelled of fear, sort of like charred wood. Even so, they weren’t responding to my demands yet I knew they could. Exasperated, I tried again.

“Take me to the girl who terminally rejected the changes you freakin’ made to her!” Scowling at the two Catrions cowering at the end of my arms, I thought of another way for the Catrions to understand me. “The failure!”

Feeling their presence before they’d entered the room, I trembled under the might of many, many Catrions flooding into the room. Shaking off my hysteria, I looked around and counted what must’ve been three dozen Catrions.

“What’s the cause for the Desert Arachnid demanding the location of the object of its interest?” This in-my-mind voice sounded authoritive yet defamatory.

“We will subdue it, Lord Nosamar.” The second voice was generic, submissive, and slavic.

Suddenly enfuriated, Lord Nosamar reprimanded the lowly Catrion. “Has my inquiry been reconciled?! We cannot afford the costs involved when dealing with a being such as the Desert Arachnid!”

A shudder of fearful respect rippled through my mind yet I was the one afraid.

“It referred to a terminal failure; I need not question who is responsible for this shameful embarrassment.”

In my head, I heard what sounded like nervous chatter; the focus of Lord Nosamar’s demands had shifted inexplicably.

“Yes, only one Catrion is incompetent enough to to fail in such a simple task, thereby erasing one much needed human from our scarce supply.”

A single Catrion gulped.

“That’s right, I’m talking about the Yrohtsi Theoro.”

Buried in Lord Nosamar’s second-to-last word was a tinge of racism.

In response to the statement made by Lord Nosamar, a brave, stupid Catrion exploded in outrage.

“Even you have no right to accuse Lord Theoro of such an atrocity!”

Lord Nosamar, insulted by the atrocity but able to keep his composure, smirked.

“Unwiser words could not be spoken,”

Before whatever rebellion or act of discipline that might have ensued could happen, a human’s voice intervened, resonating through the ship’s intercom system.

“Attention unidentified spacecraft, this is Captain Jamieson aboard the E.S. Pheonix Ash. You are entering into restricted space. Please turn aroung and head towards the nearest Martian Spaceport for inspection. Failure to comply with this message will result in confiscation of your vessel until further notice. You have one Earth week to comply and after that your ship will be boarded.”

For a fleeting instant, I thought my nightmare was over. Lord Nosamar however, snapped me back to reality.

“Take it to the terminal failure and keep their pulses operating. Failure to do so will result in disciplinary action equal to that of the creator of the terminal failure.”

Amidst grumbling protests and obedient salutes, every Catrion that could grabbed me. I didn’t fight them off because the intercom had given me hope, and forced me to forget my original plan. As far as I was concerned, my demands had been met; there was a chance Aidyn would survive.

Victory within my grasp, I stuck my tongue out at the crowd of Catrions; they flinched.

They took me to a nearby room with a tank. Eager to help Aidyn, I moved towards the familiar tank entrance, even going as far as to enter the fluid without being forced into it.

Due to my elation, I couldn’t make out what had been said when a Catrion spoke right before my head dunked into the chilling liquid.

I did however catch the response.

“As you say, Lord Theoro.”

The Catrions still holding my hands tugged them back out of the tank. Confused and angry, I thought they were taking me out so Aidyn wouldn’t get help.

If only that were the case.

A narrow edge pressed into both my wrists, slipped sideways, and drew a red line across my arms. Shrieking in pain and betrayal, I sucked in a mouthful of liquid and began choking.

Shooting up my nostrils faster than normal, oxygen rushed out of the breathing tube and blasted the foreign liquid from my lungs, igniting my tear duct fire sprinklers in the process.

Lashing out at the Catrions who’d slit my wrists wasn’t an option; the hatch on the tank sealed too quickly.

There was nothing I could do except watch the clear liquid which had nearly killed me welcome the life flowing from my body.

Chapter Eleven: The Realization Sets In

Chapter Eleven

“Desert Arachnid?” Baldy asked before remembering he’d forgotten something. “My lord,”

“Fitting, I think.” Lordy commented. “It came from the desert sand and struck like the desert breed of arachnids.”

After that, Baldy spoke no further.

Thanks to the uninteresting opaqueness of the walls surrounding me, I could not see what any of the Catrions were doing yet I knew they’d done something; the physical properties of the liquid were changing. With the decline of conversation among the Catrions came the thickening of the liquid I was in. No longer would the liquid I was suspended in tingle the multitudinous goosebumps on my bare flesh like slimy, grimy motor oil; it was turning into a sludgy gel.

Distressed by the diminishing freedom of motion, each of my limbs, tail included, paddled through the goo. Movement, I found, was still possible though strenuous.

It came upon me so fast, I thought the ability to move had been a mere illusion; abruptly my limbs froze in place. An electric current had silenced my every kinetic exhortation. Fighting the electric current was useless; every attempt to do so only resulted in agony. To my dismay, every muscle in my body was locked where it had been the moment the current killed my kinesis.

The inability to even twitch my eyes was painful although it wasn’t because of a neural response to triggered nerve endings. I was in pain because I was frustrated and afraid. Total paralysis wasn’t an ordeal one easily coped with.

Seconds were hours, hours were days, and time was mortally obese. For all I knew, I had been imprisoned in my inability to move for decades—if not centuries—before the electricity abated.

When I finally felt the electric current stop, I couldn’t tell if the substance I was in was still gelatinous or if it had reverted to its initial state of being; my muscles were so tight and spasmodic from too long a period of inactivity for me to recognize the degree of resistance they met.

Sheer exhaustion forced me to abandon my futile attempt to contemplate my surroundings. Sighing into the oxygen mask, I slipped into a deep slumber.

Some time later, I was looking at a two-dimensional computer display. I didn’t understand what I was seeing but deep-rooted in my memory banks was the knowledge of how to interpret the code in front of me. Relieved to find manipulating the on-screen data came naturally to me, I watched the effects of my changes on the endless spiraled ladder. Alarmingly, the screen flashed twice; the genetic material of the specimen I was working on had rejected my changes.

I tried again. The outcome was the same. My third attempt, even using a simpler modification, had an identical conclusion.

How the genetic material of this particular specimen could combat my attempts to rewrite the protein sequences was a mystery to me. The only possible reason why the specimen was impervious to every change I attempted was that the genetic code of the specimen had already achieved perfection; it wouldn’t likely mutate or evolve unless for several generations to come it was paired with beings that had the same alterations. For the first time ever, there was nothing I could do to rewrite the genetic code of a human, a species usually more malleable than others. A curious intuition of mine suggested the Animal was just the same…

I had no idea how long I’d been asleep; all I remembered about the time I’d spent sleeping was that I’d dreamnt about DNA. The more I concentrated on the details of the dream, the fuzzier they became.

At first glance, everything was as it had been prior to my excursion from consciousness. The liquid I was in was once again truly a liquid; as I stretched my stiff, sore muscles, I realized the liquid was more illuminated than before.

The cause, I found was that there was a second band of light on my right. As with the first light, the new light shined on the back of a human figure; the light trickled around the still silhouette to my sensitive pupils.

For a few minutes, I had to squint at the neighboring human form to learn anything about it other than it too was unclothed. Without looking in a southerly direction, I concluded the body was male; the short combed hair and the flat unremarkable chest was proof enough. Obscured by the angle of the lifeless body in relation to my own, the face pointed away from me. Still though, the peculiar shape of his earlobes made me think I knew the person’s identity.

I did! It was Alaric! All I had to do was nudge his shoulder with my tail to realize he was him.

My gentle push did more than supply a name to the person; Alaric stirred the moment I touched him. Shaking the confusion from his head, looking around, and then fixing his eyes on me, he appeared somewhat relieved. His eyes smiled, surprising me because I’d never seen him happy in my presence, but then they strayed from their position in line with my own. I watched them slide beneath my chin, hover, and then dart lower.

At first, I figured Alaric had never seen a girl before, and that he would stop studying my body momentarily. When his gaze only shifted to reexamine my upper half, I tried to shrug it off. Almost fine with his behavior given the circumstances, I merely scowled.

That all changed when I caught in the corner of my eye, an X-rated organ giving me a standing ovation. It was bad enough that we were in an already humiliating and dehumanizing situation but he really didn’t have to get so aroused. Had my tail not intervened, Alaric might have continued staring; angry for me, my tail snapped at his face.

The resulting purple welt on his upper cheek was an improvement on the vile features of the ugly, ugly boy.

After quite a long time, Alaric mustered up the courage to turn back around. Apologetic, though not nearly enough so, he scratched the back of his neck, nodded at me, and twirled back to the position my tail had left him in.

Satisfied, I returned to my exploits, which were needless to say, nothing in particular. Actually, that was only partly true; I found myself doing some soul searching.

It was all my fault. My friends and I were prisoners on a Catrion ship and I was responsible for it. We would probably never see our families again and we would be lucky to survive. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Catrions weren’t exactly treating us like welcome guests; my own misery plus the hopeless situation extinguished every last trace of happiness. Because of me, my friends and I were being held hostage by the enemy in a war that ended before I was born; something told me they were holding a grudge against humanity.

The image of me dangling from the wires that had been connected to the numerous Dragonflies as well as fragments of my most recent dream flashed in my head. “Take the Desert Arachnid away. I have no use for it at this point.”

“Yes, Lord Nosamar,” I’d not heard this voice yet; with only three words to base my opinion off of, I didn’t know very much about the conscience behind it other than that it obeyed orders.

“Don’t bother restraining it again,” Lord Nosamar commanded. “I’m curious what it will do if it isn’t held in place.”

“Yes my lord,” All of a sudden, this voice sounded as if it was trying to hide an overwhelming sense of panic.

The liquid began to gel again only this time I discovered I couldn’t test the viscosity of the congealing fluid; every cell in my body ached with drowsiness. Forcing my eyes to stay open, however difficult, was my purpose in life at that moment; I longed to know as much as I could about the space ship I was on.

Behind me, a slurping, sucking sound sang sonnets of sealed surfaces. Light poured into the tank from outside; I was vaguely aware of a nylon strap being pushed around my waist. A few seconds later, I felt another one wrapping around my frame.

Too exhausted to be certain how long it had taken for the Catrion to fish me out, I would’ve toppled onto the floor if gravity had been present. By the time I was free from the goop, I had two pairs of nylon straps clinging to my flesh thanks to the residual slime.

As I was floating freely in a microgravity environment, something had to be done with me, so at least a dozen Catrions took hold of me and brought me through many hallways and corridors. Eventually, the movement of the ceiling stopped and one-by-one, the Catrions released their grip and scurried away.

Seconds after the last Catrion let me go, a pneumatic hiss told me a nearby door was closed; the single beep that followed signaled the lock was working.

The effects of the sleep-inducing sludge lasted for a frustrating period of time. My head pressed against a hard wall and my neck bent painfully, I had to wait nearly three hours for any movement to come back to my arms, legs, fingers, and tail.

Now free of the strange fluid, I sighed over the absence of clothing. In the liquid, I could imagine I was taking a bath, but out in the open clothing-less locomotion was bothersome.

First, once I could move again, I explored the cabin I was in, searching for anything with potential usefulness. Unfortunately, the room I was in was bare; there wasn’t even a door on the bathroom or a vacuum in the shower, as was standard on all spaceships. One wall had the remnants of a sleeping sack on it; only the brass eyelets which formerly held the sleeping bag were left. Opposite the wall perpendicular to the one the sleeping bag used to be on was a padded bench; the acrylic padding had deteriorated to almost nonexistence. Beneath the disheveled bench top was an empty chest, except for a botched trail of rat excrement. Another storage receptacle, a bookshelf and dresser combined on the partial wall adjacent to the bench, granted me good fortune.

Inside, beneath another dotted line of rodent fecal matter, was the cloth part of the sleeping bag. It was in pretty shabby condition but useable nonetheless. My hope was to fasten a piece of clothing from it in order to eradicate the queer nakedness.

I picked up the tattered cloth; full of holes, any covering the fabric could offer would be minimal at best. Upon lifting it, I noticed that beneath it was a fraying pleather belt with the fastening system turned off. Excited, I slung the material over my shoulder, tied the belt around my belly, and marveled at my newly-made toga.

Returning to my exploration of the room. It was actually two rooms, rather like a suite or small apartment. In the corner, the shower was shaped into a perfect sphere. Next to the shower was a cramped toilet stall. Around the apartment were the typical handholds found on spaceships; a few of them were broken away, leaving stripped bolts jutting from the walls. Overall, the spacious prison cell wasn’t overtly inviting; it was fitting for the use the room had.

Settling down to wait for something else to happen, I discovered I didn’t have to wallow in my guilt long.

It felt like only ten minutes had passed on the icy surface near the bench when a thumping clanging came from the air vent. To say I was scared was to put my state of being mildly. Thankfully, I had no need to worry, for the face that came through the portal was friendly.

A fiber glass sledgehammer tapped the grate out of place. I watched it clatter around, ricocheting of three walls and spiraling towards the room’s entrance. After the sledgehammer emerged came the momentary forgetting of my sorrow.

Topless and clad only in ragged khaki shorts, Victor pulled himself headfirst out of the ventilation duct; I didn’t wait for him to finish climbing out. Dashing as fast as my toga would allow, I struggled to keep my anatomy confidential (although technically it wasn’t that private anymore since Alaric had seen my business).

Victor had barely freed himself from the ventilation duct when he found himself bound by my tight embrace. The poor fellow probably felt like he’d been pounced upon by a starving mountain lion.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you!” The truth was, I was happy enough to cry.

He chuckled in an odd sort of way. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” He was calm, serious but calm. “I haven’t seen you since the attack; I thought the worst.”

“You mean you’ve seen the others?” Excitement echoed in my shaky voice. “Tell me how Leroy’s doing!”

Taken aback by my sudden urgency, Victor stammered out a response. “I-I don’t know. I-I’ve only seen him once, and when I looked again, he was gone” Victor eased away from me. “He hasn’t returned to the room he was in.”

A wave of nausea bubbled over me. “W-was he okay—when you saw him, I mean?”

“H-he looked fine,” Victor nodded. “But what about you?”

I collapsed back onto Victor’s chest. “I’m sorry,”

His touch could only do so much, but the effect it had on my spirits was worth every ounce his microscopic cells had to offer. Feeling the pressure of his fingertips in my ribcage was a welcomed contrast to the cold numbness I’d gone through while submerged.

This time he spoke, his voice trembled like mine. “Don’t worry about it; I’d rather be on an adventure with you than researching defunct technologies from the Stardust Conflict and waiting for class to end so we could skip our chores and hang out together.”

It wasn’t quite what I expected. His words were comforting in a way, although my preference at that moment involved hiding away , alone with Victor on his little island while an orange sun drifted beneath the faraway horizon.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, still grateful for Victor’s firm farm-boy pectorals.

Pretending my head pillowed by Victor’s chest wasn’t as abnormal as it felt, I let my arms continue to hug hum. In a way, it was sort of like when Victor and I would slack off on the shores of Lake Wannapeg; never were we this intimate, yet it wasn’t unnatural for us to nap in our bottommost layer of clothing after a long swim, or for us to huddle close together on blustery autumn nights. Perhaps this was simply the next evolution of our companionship.

“Hey,” Victor whispered in my ear. “Let’s get you into some actual clothes.”

“What,” I whispered back; the thought never occurred to me that Victor might have real clothes. “That would be great,”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Victor rubbed my arms as he leaned away from our hug. “Oh, and I don’t know if you know this already, but if a strange watery liquid starts spurting out of the shower, don’t stop it from touching your body. Aidyn and I think it’s their way of nourishing us but all we really know for sure is that it’s absorbed into our skin via osteoporosis.”

“You mean osmosis?” I wondered, unsure of how the liquid might relate to the shrinkage of bones.

“Yeah! That!” He exclaimed. “I was never any good at science—Aidyn knew what it was.” He shrugged. “But yeah, if the weird liquid doesn’t make contact with any part of your skin, after a while, the bit it doesn’t touch will become scaly and white. It’s pretty gross actually.”

I nodded. “Can I-can I come with you?”

Victor shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s too big of a risk. The Catrions probably put you in your own cell for a reason, and I’m worried what might happen if they discovered you weren’t here.” The reluctance I heard in Victor’s tone reassured me; he wasn’t just telling me to stay put for no apparent reason although I didn’t entirely understand his reason. I just knew he had one.

“I’ll be right back, I promise.” He kissed my forehead. “Just stay here, please.”

Annoyed, I nodded my acceptance. “You better be right back or else.”

Nodding, Victor untangled himself from my tail before leaving; it wasn’t like I was helping him get free either.

With one last tentative peek over his shoulder, he clambered back into the ventilation duct. Disheartened, I slumped down next to the opening. Every second that passed twisted another knot into my already contorted stomach.

Sadly, so many seconds passed before Victor returned, my stomach deserved a Boy Scout merit badge. Even with my prolonged sense of times, hours had to have gone by.

Finally, Victor reappeared.

“What took you so long?” I hoped I didn’t sound too rude; I prayed Victor interpreted my tone as teasing instead of demanding.

The tone of my voice didn’t seem to matter; Victor was somber-faced well before I’d spoke. He tossed a rolled-up bundle at me, shook his head, and mumbled the reason for his distress.

“They’re gone—all of them.”

“Who’s gone?” I asked, forgetting about the real clothes Victor had brought me; Victor’s alarming expression was more important than how fashionable my attire was.

“Alaric and Nellya, and Aidyn too.” Victor slouched on the bench as he spoke. “Aidyn was right, I should have tried to prevent the Catrions from getting to them instead of exploring the ship.”

“They would’ve been taken anyways.” I reasoned. “I mean, even I was experimented on.” The moment the words rolled off my tongue, I knew they hadn’t been the right thing to say; I was thinking about some stuff I’d read in the textbook that related to what we were going through.

During the Catrion War, the Catrions frequently abused their P.O.W.s by altering their DNA or testing the limits of human survivability. According to the textbook, the few survivors rescued from Catrion ships often recounted horror stories of the Catrions taking them or their fellow prisoners into strange laboratories where the prisoners endured all sorts of horrific tortures. Some of the less fortunate ones were used to test new Biospheres. Most however, were pricked and prodded into insanity; a commonality found in almost every prisoner’s testimony was the interest Catrions had in sexual organs and unborn fetuses. There were also reports of forced pregnancies early on in the war, though cases in which a male prisoner was forced to rape a female prisoner were rare.

In all honesty, I didn’t know what the Catrions were doing or even if they were picking up their old habits. Whatever they were doing though, Victor and I really couldn’t be certain our friends were safe. We just prayed we’d see them again.

“You were taken?” Perhaps Victor’s disheveled emotional state was the cause for his momentary lapse of memory. “What’d they do to you?”

“Well, basically,” Honestly, I had no idea what they’d done. “I don’t know exactly, but they made me feel better.”

Where the inspiration for Victor’s response had come from was as big a mystery as what the Catrions had done to me.

“You mean they got you high?” He plunged back into his former hopelessness.

“No, I, uh, I’m not sure how to explain it.” Blaming the absurdity of Victor’s response, I felt stupid for being unable to describe what it had been like. Trying to shake the feeling off, I did my best to clarify for him.

“They’re probably fine—I saw Alaric before they brought me back here.”

“He’s not the one I’m worried about.”

Victor’s words weren’t cold but they weren’t very pleasant either. As a result, I found responding appropriately to be difficult.

“Nellya’s a strong girl,” I whispered.

He just stared at me; we both knew Nellya wasn’t the focus of his angst either.

For several minutes, he and I just stared at each other. Realizing how needed my services were, I kicked off from the wall behind me, floated across the room, and situated myself next to him. To help comfort him, I wrapped my arm (and tail) around his shoulders and leaned my head against him.

Our silence rang for quite a while afterwards.

When we finally started chatting again, it was me who started the conversation.

“Apart from crawling around ventilation conduits, what’ve you been doing?”

“What?” Victor’s head jerked up. “Oh, I’ve been exploring the ship through the air circulation systems and emergency access tunnels.”

“What inspired you to climb into a dusty ventilation duct in the first place?”

Victor repositioned himself on the bench. “After we were abducted, I was the first to wake up and so I started looking for a way out. The air vent in the room we were in was already missing so I just climbed in to take a look.” He took a breath. “Then almost as soon as I’d pulled my ankles through the hole, the Catrions came in and began tagging Aidyn, Nellya and Alaric.”

“Tagging?” This was deeply fascinating. “What do you mean?”

“On their ankles, they put a plastic bracelet with a number on it.” Victor had me captivated. “When Aidyn woke up, she and I figured the Catrions forgot about me because I didn’t get numbered.”

“I didn’t get numbered,” I muttered, not meaning to contradict Victor. It was just that I certainly hadn’t been overlooked.

“I’ll have to think about that,” Victor mumbled. “It doesn’t make sense, at least according to what Aidyn and I reasoned.”

Victor’s doubts weren’t something I could easily comment on.

“It doesn’t really matter now though,” He sighed.

“Don’t say that!” I was appalled at how fast Victor had given up hope.

“No really,” Victor cut me off before I could encourage him. “Now isn’t the time to wallow in despair. We should be helping the others.”

“What?” The sudden change of face startled me.

“I’m going to see if I can find our weapons so we can keep them nearby until we’re ready to strike.” Victor mused. “You’ll probably want to keep whatever I can get you hidden though. Who knows if we’d ever get our stuff back if the Catrions caught us with it.”

I nodded, pretending I understood as well as him.

“That reminds me,” Victor turned his head intuitively. “If you ever decide to change into those clothes, then it might be best not let the Catrions see them either. I’d be willing to bet they would do whatever they could to catch us.”

Embarrassed that the clothes Victor had given me were sleeping untouched in my lap. To hide my shame, I smirked. It was the only way I could find to conceal my embarrassment.

“Y-you’re probably right.”

Victor smacked his lips together and nodded once. Stay here, I’m going to look for more stuff.”

Not exactly eager to comply, I protested. “Wait, why do I have to stay here?!” The way I saw it, staying meant a guilt-ridden anticipation of the Catrions.

“Well, if you stay here, you can’t be wherever the Catrions would take you.” I smiled at Victor’s pitiful attempt at humor. Victor didn’t seem to be satisfied by my weak smile yet he accepted it.

Right as Victor was about to leave, he reconsidered; he came back to me, took my hands, and gently squeezed. “You’ll be fine and I promise to check in every two hours.” Nothing Victor could say would calm my nerves as he left.

And so, I waited. For the first term of Victor’s absence. I tried various tactics to pass the time, but all of them left me bored and uninterested.

Victor had brought me a fluorescent pink swimsuit top and a pair of denim carpenter shorts. Further inspection of the shorts revealed they weren’t mine or even designed for my gender. Touching my shins, the bottom hemline was icy metal; I only had shorts but the half zipper indicated these shorts could become pants. Although they weren’t mine, I recognized the familiar location of the pockets. Like most pairs of carpenter pants, the pockets and straps were positioned within reach of my hands, particularly my right, although the improper fit put the pockets just beyond my finger tips. The familiarity of the pocket pattern was a welcome reminder of the world I’d left, the world I’d loved.

My father had three pairs of carpenter pants; two were made of a durable khaki and the last pair was dulled denim with brown residue on the knees from the days he spent on Mars. I had always liked that pair of jeans of his. They were a symbol of my father’s love for me.

Way back when I was a kid, no older than six or seven, my father took me on a special trip to the moon’s capital city, Luna. At the time, I was afraid because of the gravity variance between Earth and the Moon. To calm me down, my father promised that if I held his hand and the twisted strap on his pants leg, he and I wouldn’t be separated.

Thinking of Admiral Lygre Griffin and the promise he’d given his tailed daughter, I curled my fingers around the same strap on the shorts I wore.

By the time Victor returned, my knuckles ached from the tight hold I had on the twisted strap. Victor’s eyes followed my arm down past my hip to my slightly bent thigh where my hand was clenched on a strip of sewn cloth.

“Are those clothes okay?” Victor wondered as he approached. “I couldn’t find much that looked like it would fit you.”

I nodded. “They’re fine, but what do you mean you couldn’t find much?” I was confused that he’d had to look for clothes to fit me when the pink top I had was obviously mine; I was under the impression Victor had found my travel bags. “All the clothes I packed fit me.”

“Yeah, but the stuff I found seems to be in no apparent order.” Victor scratched his head. “It’s just a random assortment of various things. Some of it is ours, most of it isn’t.”

“Strange,” I muttered. “It doesn’t make sense for our stuff to be separated like that.”

“The only thing I can figure is that the Catrions were sorting through our stuff, maybe looking for something.” He didn’t know any more than I did; I heard the uncertainty quiver in his voice.

“But you said there didn’t seem to be any order in the stuff you found.” I commented. “If they were sorting our stuff, wouldn’t there be some sense to it?”

Victor, frustrated by his ignorance, sighed. “There might be some sort of arrangement but I don’t know what it is.”

“What do you know?” I wondered. “Not that I’m insinuating you don’t know anything.” The second statement came when I realized how condescending my question could have sounded.

“Not much, I’m afraid.” His morbid disposition portrayed the depravity of his message.

Unsure of what other option was available to me, I gently hugged him. As id the same mind controlled us both, we patted each other’s back and drew apart.

“I-uh-I think I should be going. The longer I stay, the longer it will take to find what we need.” Smug and afraid, Victor kicked off the nearest wall and cast me one final glance before vanishing once more the way he’d come.

I was alone yet again.

Chapter Ten: The Desert Arachnid

Chapter Ten

Every part of my body hurt. My spine burned and there was a railroad being constructed in my head. Each muscle, tissue, and tendon contained hundreds of sewing pins while the corresponding sewing machine stitched thread-less at my bones. Where bone met bone, boiling agony scarred the cartilage. I wanted to die—that’s how much I ached.

Even if I could’ve moved without hurting, nearly every movement was impossible; I was attached to a wall. Freedom might’ve been mine if super glue held me, but alas it was cold steel. Wrapped around my arm was a bulky chain; my tail was lashed to my arm with the same chain. From my bicep region, the chain was bolted to a chrome wall before looping back over my arm and tail. The pattern of constricting and constraining continued three times, once around my upper arm, once around my elbow, and once around my lower arm.

My tail, being significantly longer than my arm, was contorted into painful arcs and chained to the wall at each bend. Though the last three or four feet of my tail was numb, I saw at least a dozen black and purple bruises where steel met flesh. My tail looked and felt like it was being bent to its limits; vertebrae ground against their neighbors. As flexible as my tail was, it wasn’t that flexible.

My feet and left arm weren’t restrained, though both ached just the same. From their free-floating nature, I gathered I was in space. The series of events between my fight with the Catrions and arriving in space, I didn’t know.

If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost ignore my agony and examine my surroundings. The oval door of the room I was in was slightly ajar. Three of the walls (one of which was the floor from my perspective) were blanketed with a rank imitation of the former carpet; in many places but especially in the corners, the fibers had rotted away, revealing the yellowed metal surface beneath it. On many of the walls were the jagged scars from the numerous unknown objects which had once been bolted there. The ceiling was battered beyond repair; a dozen or so ceiling panels were missing and two of the recessed lights were burnt out. The only light really working was the one farthest from me yet it was blinking erratically; looking at it hurt my eyes and compounded the jackhammer in my skull.

From somewhere beyond my door came a moaning as agonizing to my ears as any of my other grievances. The pathetic note of the incessant moaning was terrible; if my eyes weren’t already sopping from my own grief, I would have cried over the morbid expression of misery. I wanted to investigate the source of the anguished cry, but alas, the chains holding me to the wall prohibited such an action.

Cursing the pain I was in, I struggled to remember why I was in this situation. Thinking was almost as painful as the horrible bends in my tail. In a flash of remorseful remembrance, I realized I was here thanks to my own stupidity. If I hadn’t been so self-assured, so self-doubting, everything would be just peachy; if I could do one thing over again in my life, I would’ve introduced Alaric to the four knuckles on my left fist and never left home.

Honestly, the deafening pain resonating through my body was nothing compared to the heart-ache I had. A large globule of a tear tumbled away from my eye as I prayed to see my beloved family again. Having been without my mother and father for so long was paralyzing; I would have given everything I owned if only to see Drib’s smiling face again. Even my uncle Doctor Charles McLeod was sorely missed.

From out in the corridor, a rhythmic clacking silenced the terrible moaning. With this sound came an unexpected numbing sensation. It started as a strange flashback; from a third-person perspective, I watched myself tangle with the Catrions on the golden Saharan sand.

The moment I glimpsed myself, I noticed the color of the sand beneath the tailed figure changed from gold to burgundy. The next thing I noticed was that the figure wasn’t wildly swinging two swords, one in hand and one in tail; the tailed human I saw only had a machete grasped in his tail. That was another detail I noticed: The person was no longer a fifteen-year-old girl by the name of Préyhen Griffin. She—I—had shorter hair, a flatter chest, and the same nose. Unless I was mistaken, I was seeing a mental image of my father, barely a few years older than myself, fighting on Mars.

As if my ears were filled with shower water, I heard two voices in a frenzied debate. For some reason, I felt the images I’d seen were connected to the words I was hearing.

“Is it the Animal? I can’t remember properly.” One voice asked. Like the phantom images I was seeing, I was hearing the conversation in my head.

“No, no, I don’t believe it’s the Animal.” The second voice responded with uncertainty. “If memory serves correctly, the Animal was of a different subspecies.”

“Ah yes,” The first voice was beginning to sound like it belonged to a balding man in a coffee shop. “I didn’t think it could’ve been the Animal; too many Reproductions have passed for it to appear as young as it does.”

“”That is true; maybe the specimen we have is a clone of the Animal.” The second voice reminded me of a fraternity scholar.

“What is the likelihood of that happening?” Baldy seemed a little unsure of this theory.

“It’s a possibility,” Frat-boy actually didn’t sound too confident either. “If it is the Animal or not is irrelevant now. The important thing is that this specimen poses as much of a threat as the Animal did.”

“Hardly!” Baldy spoke with more exuberance than I would’ve expected from the way his voice sounded in general. “The Animal decimated the predecessor of Lords Harmend and Nosamar, Lord Theoro.”

“I was talking about the damage the Animal exhibited in melee.” Frat boy had a tremor of fear in his voice; at the same time, I felt a jarring fracture separate my third bodily section from the other two.

Confused, I thought the agonizing experience related to a Catrion more than it did to me. Though I was no medical professional, I was pretty confident that humans, even mutated genetic anomalies, didn’t have three snowman-like spheres. The closest I knew humans could come to the cracking sensation I’d felt was the breaking of a bone; I’d never broken a bone before but I imagined it didn’t feel like one was an egg in a bakery. Needless to say, experiencing the sensation I had was strange for numerous reasons.

“Point taken,” Baldy replied. “It is true that the specimen we have in custody rivals the melee capabilities of the Animal.”

“I hope that having this specimen on board does not prove detrimental to the success of what we intend to do.” Frat-boy worried.

“Nonsense!” Baldy, in my opinion, sounded too confident for the tentativeness I’d sensed in them both earlier. “As long as we keep it properly restrained, there should be no cause for alarm.”

Floating around the corner came two orange shapes; they looked crusty and fragile. They were Catrions.

When they saw me, they froze, continuing forward only because their inertia wouldn’t let them stop so easily.

“It’s awake!” Frat-boy cried in shock.

It was a while before Baldy responded.

“Relax, it’s restrained.” The quakiness in his voice betrayed him. “We should be safe.”

“The same had been said about the Animal, the renegade being crafted from anonymity.” Frat-boy spoke quietly, barely louder than a whisper. “I was lucky, but I had a comrade who had four reanimations destroyed by it.”

Baldy didn’t seem to find encouragement in Frat boy’s testimony.

Approaching with a lot of caution, I counted the seconds until they were almost within reach. For almost two minutes, they stared at the restraints on my tail; it was as if they dared it to break free.

At that point, I was too disheartened to bother with violence; even if they sat me free, I wouldn’t have had the motivation to push one of them aside.

One of the two Catrions moved back towards the doorway. The odd thing was that it didn’t turn to leave; it moved as if it were already facing the door, which couldn’t be so if it had been facing me. Moments later, it returned with a fuschia-colored glass orb carried by two of it’s three glass arms.

I couldn’t see what exactly the Catrion did but the pink contents of the orb escaped the confines of the glass. The pink substance was gaseous in nature, much like flour after accidentally fluffing the bag. It burned my eyes as it billowed around me yet the ocular stinging wasn’t the worst sensation it caused. My diaphragm heaved in spasmodic bursts as I struggled to not vomit; the gas had the same stench stale urine did.

Tears welled on the inside edge of my eyelids, more so than before. Even so, I fought against the fierce pain. Anger fueled my intense battle more than anything; I was infuriated that with all the pain I was in, they could pile on more misery.

Drowsiness overcame me but before I succumbed to the sleepiness, I thought I heard Baldy proclaim that it wasn’t working, that I was able to resist what I shouldn’t have been able to.

All faded to dark.

Blinking several times, I startled out of unconsciousness. My eyes still hurt, but it wasn’t from a cloud of gas. No, this time, my eyes hurt like I’d splashed shampoo in them while showering, or perhaps opened them underwater in a chlorinated swimming pool.

That might have been because I was submerged in some sort of cloudy liquid with a crude oxygen mask strapped to my face; from what I could see of the mask, it was held together by duct tape. The liquid’s cloudiness was caused by the thousands of fine particles floating in it; the liquid’s viscosity didn’t exactly permit the particles to move around much. With the consistency of motor oil, the queer fluid felt slick and gelatinous on my skin.

Because liquids could not be contained without a container, there was a solid metal tank holding all the liquid together. Judging the size of the tank was difficult yet I could tell it was huge. While I floated in the relative center of it, there was about a foot above my head and below my feet. To the left and right, the tank continued farther than the poor lighting let me see; it looked like it curved off, forming a doughnut-shape.

The only light in the tank came from a half-inch wide strip of yellow LEDs. The amount of light they produced was comparable to a candle at the end of a dark hallway; it wasn’t enough to read by.

That’s when I realized something was missing, namely my clothes.

Shocked, I had to stare through the darkness at each part of my body for several moments just to confirm the fact. Simply put, my situation wasn’t very promising.

After I’d recovered from the shock of being naked, I found a few improvements upon my former situation. As I was no longer in the room I’d been in before, I was free!

Well, actually, I was only free to move my arms, legs, and tail. Basically, I was only as free as the tank and oxygen mask allowed.

Another detail I had overlooked was my stamina. While suspended in the strange liquid, I discovered how much better I felt: I hadn’t yet recovered all the way, but I was close. Even though my body was still exhausted, I welcomed the absence of pain.

With my hair swirling around me, I heard talking.

“Which specimen did you place in this tank?” This voice didn’t sound like either Baldy or Frat-boy. It was more precise and scientific than the other two had been.

“It is the enigmatic semblance of the Animal, my lord.” The second voice sounded kind of like Baldy, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Have you run diagnostics yet?” The first voice, the one with apparent authority, asked.

“Yes my lord,” Baldy answered. “They are on the human computer over there.”

A few seconds passed before the authoritative voice responded.

“It is not the Animal, I should know.”

“If I may my lord, then what is it? We have never been able to craft a lethal class five spinal appendage.”

“It’s the Desert Arachnid.” From the sound of his voice, he looked like a Lordy to me.

Chapter Nine: From Russia With Love

Chapter Nine

Three days had passed before the shipping container compound was fully assembled. One day passed before Aidyn and I grew fed up with out accommodations. It was bad enough the first night when it was just us. There wouldn’t have been a problem if some privacy had been made around the toilet if no other part of the washroom. Despite the lack of certain creature comforts, we accepted the situation, until that was, the arrival of the others. When they came, since Aidyn and I were staying in the only bathroom, we had to get up and leave every time one of seven people had to bathe, use the toilet, or prepare for bed. The worst part wasn’t the redundancy of our need to leave, or even the lack of any real door between our room and theirs, but the smell; Aidyn and I were forced out of our comfort to return to a room smelling like the public restroom it was. The water treatment technologies behind the wall worked perfectly, but they could do nothing to stop the nauseating fumes of field ration flatulence.

We also weren’t happy with the distribution of the beds. It wasn’t that we had issues with each other but we found the bed placement unfair. All in all, there were six containers. In the first one to be delivered, Aidyn’s and mine, there was the water facility. The second container, belonging to the boys, was placed side-by-side to the first; the door was in the side of both boxes near the front. The metal of the doors was folded around the edge of each container to create an airtight seal. Box number three was reserved for Nellya Alone and like its neighbors, had a door in the same place; I could see from the foot of my bed all the way to Nellya’s far wall. The fourth container was placed end-to-end with Nellya’s. I wasn’t quite sure why, but it only had half the available space open, like in the first container. Container number five was next to the fourth and butted up to the second; it had the only exit to the outside. The last container was for Mr. Dabahov to sleep in.

Aidyn and I were perturbed by the layout because Nellya and Mr. Dabahov each had their own container while the fourth and fifth containers were uninhabited. Granted, those two also didn’t have beds in them, but our feminine instincts ignored that fact.

The fourth day after assembling the shelter was when Mr. Dabahov scheduled our first expedition into the desert wasteland. For no reason other than we were teenagers, Aidyn and I wanted to sleep in that day. Naturally, Mr. Dabahov saw to it personally that we got up. At 4:30 am, he marched through the compound in his pink floral boxers to do business in a nonprofit way.

“Good morning ladies, no, you don’t need to get up, I’m just going to vee.” His tone sounded more awake than it should’ve been so early in the morning.

On the top bunk, I sat straight up, failing to catch the tan sheet as it rolled off my chest; beneath me, Aidyn’s stirring rocked the bed. “Wait a second and give us a chance to leave!” She growled, angry to be forced out of bed so early. “We really don’t want to see that.”

A pained look of guilt splashed across Mr. Dabahov's face, but as soon as it appeared it was gone. “Fine, hurry out of here so I can go.”

Aidyn and I weren’t thrilled to leave our beds, and I particularly dreaded having to wait in the next room, where Victor slept. It was humiliating to stand in one’s pajamas in front of the opposite gender.

“You,” Mr. Dabahov grabbed my left arm as I passed him. “Why are you vearing a bikini?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, aware of Aidyn stopping in the doorway to listen in.

“You know, a two-piece bazing zuit vorn by girls in ze summertime before ze Catrion War.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I admitted.

“It looks like you are veering a bikini. You’re clothes are so colorful and your bra ties like a bikini top.” I looked down at my outfit; I had on short teal shorts and a fun purple top from the scavenging expedition.

“I’ve had the shorts for a long time—they were a Christmas present—and my bra came from a recent scavenging expedition.” I explained, still confused by Mr. Dabahov.

“So it is a bikini top. I’ve never seen you vear it and it vas strange to me zat you vould sleep in a bazing zuit.” He let go of my arm. “Before ze war, young vomen vore zem as shirts in ze summertime and rarely did zey sleep in zem.”

“Oh,” I muttered wondering why I needed to know such information. “Thank you for telling me.” I left the room and leaned against the wall next to Aidyn.

Three hours later, Aidyn and I were getting ready for the trek into the desert. Aidyn had khakis, a grey tee-shirt with a zip-up matching sweatshirt, sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat. On her cloth belt was a borrowed scimitar from Mr. Dabahov and in her hands was the broomstick-turned-bowstaff.

I had stark white pants with my father’s sword attached to the back belt loop like I’d seen him do. My upper half was covered by the straps of my bags, bow, and arrow pouch, and the purple bikini top I’d slept in.

We joined the others in the fifth container. Victor stared interestedly at me before looking away embarrassed. To my disgust, Alaric did the same.

“Vhat are you doing in that? You’ll burn up! Go put more clothing on!” Mr. Dabahov commanded me. Disgruntled, I pulled a zip-up sweatshirt on and returned to the exit.

With my swift return to the exit foyer, Mr. Dabahov reached for the door, but it was my turn to ask him a question. “Sir, what’s he doing?” I pointed at Leroy.

“Vhat?”

“Can’t he stay here? He doesn’t have to come.” I pleaded. “I’ll stay with him so he’s not alone.”

Mr. Dabahov looked from the kid to the tail and shook his head. “No, ve all must go.”

“What?! Why?!” I was infuriated the moment Leroy’s sentence was passed; an appeal had to be made.

“Don’t question my authority.” He reprimanded. “You vill both come vhether you like it or not.”

Even with his tone leaving no room for argument, I was determined to counter him, yet Mr. Dabahov wouldn’t hear it. He marched outside, earning baffled stares from his entourage. Having no other option, all of us, including Leroy and I, followed a fair distance back from Mr. Dabahov’s stern silence.

Just outside was one of the dune buggies equipped with two titanic water containers, each holding as much as a tall fat person’s custom-fitted bathtub. On top of the new tanks were four jury-rigged seat belts. I started to climb on top of the dune buggy, since I was the one most able to get up there after Leroy, but Mr. Dabahov shooed me off.

“No, you and ze little one are riding in ze back.” He pointed inside the dune buggy in a twirling fashion. “Victor, Alaric, and zat ozer girl vill take ze roof.”

“My name’s Aidyn. Learn it.” Aidyn muttered under her breath.

Mr. Dabahov sat down in the driver’s seat, Nellya took the front passenger seat, and I took the backseat. Leroy sat down on my lap to conserve space. We derived some amusement from the remaining three getting on the roof. Victor held his hands together, fingers intertwined, for Aidyn to climb up to her seat. Then he leaned onto the roof, heaved, and rolled upwards. Not nearly as tall as Victor, Alaric longed for some help. None came; he struggled and scurried until he got halfway, but by then, Mr. Dabahov had floored it. Unfortunately Alaric stayed with the vehicle, and somehow got on top.

The desert heat was unbearable. I felt like the very moisture of my sweat was being evaporated before I could derive any cooling from it. My mouth was drier than my mother’s attempt at cornbread. If we didn’t have many gallons of water, survival for five minutes would’ve been impossible. If it was this suffocating for me, I couldn’t fathom what Victor, Aidyn, and Alaric were going through on the roof without any protection from the punishing sun.

For two hours, Mr. Dabahov drove but for two hours, nothing was spotted except for barren yellow dunes. It was on the way back excitement fell in our direction, or rather, we fell into it.

The metal structure we called home had come into sight, probably because we drove onto a hill, when the bottom fell out. The sand beneath the spiked rubber tires melted under the weight of the vehicle. Bringing the four-wheeled craft to a jarring halt, the shifting sands caused the dune buggy to plummet fifteen feet down into a newly-formed pit.

The stiff shocks cushioned the impact, but didn’t stop our wonder. The dune buggy appeared to be stuck in an intersection of several subterranean tunnels. Going off in all directions, the tunnels were about eighteen inches in diameter. Apparent after the fall was the reason we’d fallen: the intersection of the tunnels weakened the sand above it.

“Hey, are you guys okay?” Aidyn asked from somewhere above us. I poked my head out of the roll cage and saw she and Victor standing at the top of the hole looking down. After a quick examination of the others, I nodded.

The consensus was that the four of us at the bottom of the pit should get out. It was a genius plan created by Captain Obvious. Logistically speaking though, it wasn’t easy. Of the four of us, Leroy got out the easiest, thanks to his wings. Stuck on our legs, Mr. Dabahov, Nellya, and I had to wade out.

At the top, keeping a safe distance away from the unsteady sand at the edge of the pit, I had a better perspective of what had happened but I had little time to break down what had happened to Alaric’s innocent question and Mr. Dabahov’s not-so-innocent response.

“Does anyone else hear that buzzing sound?”

Mr. Dabahov’s reply started with a synonym for a dung beetle’s choice diet. “It’s ze Catrions! Ve’re being ambushed!”

Panic and fear slammed all of us except Mr. Dabahov and Leroy; Leroy was too young to understand and for Mr. Dabahov, it was a less-than-pleasant reunion.

Before I even got my scimitar all the way out of its scabbard, hundreds of Catrions were flying around us. Hot adrenaline replaced the blood circulating through my veins.

The Catrions, in their natural form, couldn’t fly. Truthfully, they could barely walk. Catrions were shaped like snowmen with thin irregularly placed twiggy arms and legs. These three short legs were enough to keep them erect but movement was restrained to a clumsy shuffle. That was why they flew. To fly, they had invented wire-framed orthopters dubbed Dragonflies by the humans. Their flying contraptions were called Dragonflies due to their remarkable resemblance to the mystical mosquito munchers when a Catrion sat in one.

The first three spheres, also the largest, conformed to the shape of the Catrion. The next sphere had a glass orb in it filled with a sloshing yellow liquid in it. Typically there were two to three more smaller wire balls on the end that held vibrant glass orbs of dazzling color. I knew from reading the history book (which I seldom did) that those colorful spheres were far more sinister than they looked. Called Biospheres during the war, these glass balls contained an organic gas which did any number of things to the human body. Back at the front of the Dragonfly, two pairs of translucent wings flapped rhythmically up and down. The Dragonflies let the Catrions get around infinitely more efficiently.

Many Catrions landed and many more stayed airborne. Following Mr. Dabahov’s lead, I began hacking at the Catrions. Whereas Mr. Dabahov’s motives were a combination of vengeance and blood lust, I imagined my purpose was to protect Leroy.

I found the orange exoskeleton of the Catrions made precise cuts futile except when amputating their frail limbs. The scimitars could wedge deep into the Catrion being struck but were often too difficult to free. The style of combat most effective against the Earth-born aliens was savage, brutal, and stress-relieving; Victor’s hammer or Aidyn’s twirling staff were the best weapons available.

In our party, only Mr. Dabahov proved to be a Catrion killer; he had multiple piles of bodies forming around him. That wasn’t to say he was the only one racking up kills—my tail’s killing abilities were impressive.

Leroy was in the center of a rough circle formed by everyone else; we all had our backs to him and fought defensively. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed possible at the time with Oken shoulder-to-shoulder with me, but a Catrion waddled between us towards Leroy. Backhanding the Catrion seemed like it would’ve worked, but doing so would have left my left side exposed. As the Catrion approached Leroy, he began crying and saying he was sorry for being bad. When the Catrion’s three-fingered hand reached for my nephew, I did all that made sense.

I reacted.

Snatching my father’s katana from its sheath, I swung hard with my tail. The killing blow was so fierce, the top three inches of the blade entered one side of the Catrion’s head, and exited out the other. Viscous pink blood splattered the back of Oken’s dirty blonde hair.

Quite unexpectedly, the images of a younger version of my father sprinting across red sand, standing naked with Drib in a dark weightless room, and then wearing his black military uniform in a carpeted office appeared in my head. Next came a moving picture of a teenage girl, clad only in her skin, with an ankle-length tail swaying gently; she was standing there crying.

Swooping in after the images, came organized structures of language.

“What’s that?!”

“It has a class five spinal appendage!”

“Is it the Animal?”

All the Catrions around me stepped back.

“No, it can’t be! It’s the wrong subspecies!”

“Is it the Smith Child?!”

“It might be but the Smith Child isn’t known for violence!”

“Kill it!”

“No!”

“It’ll sooner kill you!”

“All the more reason to kill it!”

“No! Keep it alive! The Animal had perfect DNA!”

“But it’s not the Animal!”

“But we don’t have its DNA!”

“Subdue them all! We could use the others!”

“But it has a class five spinal appendage!”

“Alive!”

The manic hysteria quieted down.

“Did anyone else hear that?” I asked absentmindedly while bashing a nearby Catrion.

“Hear vhat?”

“No,”

“Shut up already.”

“I did.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry, I was too busy trying not to die to notice any sounds. What was it? Church bells?” That last one was Victor.

The confusion ceased when something more tragically disturbing took its place. Mr. Dabahov had been dancing a death dance with almost a dozen Catrions. He was skilled, there wasn’t any doubt on that, but skill was just good luck haunting one body too long. The phantom stalking Mr. Dabahov was about to change.

One of the Catrions in front of Mr. Dabahov had a toilet-shaped weapon, like many of the Catrions. If it were a toilet, the rectangular part that would have been the tank was held underneath two of the fragile arms of the Catrion while the bowl conformed to the midsection of the Catrion. On what would’ve been the base of the toilet was a six-inch circular opening with three hinged flaps covering it. These flaps, like the lips of a hungry chimpanzee about to snack on a twig of fresh termites, opened. The Catrion holding the queer weapon jiggled backwards, a pop not quite as loud as the rupture of a corn kernel in a movie theater’s concession stand sounded, and a ball of acid roughly the same size as the flapped opening it came out of flew through the air.

The ball of acid hit Mr. Dabahov in his chest. Dropping his wide assortment of weapons, Mr. Dabahov collapsed to his knees. In an attempt to rid himself of the horrible pain, he threw his hands onto his chest, into the acid that was eating away his flesh. Screaming in agony, he shouted his last words to the clear sky.

“My love, ve die ze same!”

Those who survived Mr. Dabahov watched in horror as the acid ate away his tissue. First the acid ate the cartilage holding his ribs to his breast bone; the skin, muscle, and other fibrous tissues in his hands melted away. The bones in three of his fingers fell to the African sand he kneeled on. His pain must have been excruciating, but thankfully, it was short-lived. The acid touched a lung, causing it to deflate with a slow hiss. By the time the acid reached his heart, it was barely the diameter of a golf ball. As his heart beat for the last time, the shrinking ball of acid burned a trench into the lifeless muscle; the blood coming in from the heart’s last pump drowned out what was left of the acid.

We were all traumatized, Nellya more than the rest of us combined. Witnessing someone die, let alone fie painfully due to violence, shocked us so much we could barely fight anymore. None of us dared to believe what had just happened; I was too stunned to let another mysterious voice distract me.

An instant replay of Mr. Dabahov’s death played back in my head. “I said alive!”

The image of a person kneeling in a dark room, with his hands clapped together, pleading for mercy appeared in my mind; I could neither see the man’s face, nor was I even sure he was human. “Forgive me my lord, I don’t know what came over me.”

“Very well,” The first voice said; I saw a sea-green glass orb hover in my head. “Inoculate the rest of them.”

A Dragonfly zoomed overhead, dropping the same green sphere I’d visualized seconds earlier. The glass ball landed in the center of our party just next to Leroy, shattered, and enveloped us in a fog the color the orb had been. Coughing and spluttering became a common song we sang as a chorus. My eyes burned as one-by-one the others succumbed to the fumes.

First Victor fell, then Leroy laid on the ground. Alaric buckled at the knees and Nellya tried to hold on to her consciousness but failed. Aidyn pulled her shirt up over her mouth and nose, determined to continue twirling her stick; her makeshift mask didn’t work for long. Seeing my friends fall angered me so much I vowed to kill every Catrion within my reach; I didn’t feel any debilitating effects from the gas.

I didn’t understand why they all dropped yet I seemed fine, except for choking a lot. In a fit of rage, I slashed down at the nearest Catrion while hacking upwards with my tail. A Catrion lost two of its three oddly positioned arms with the downswing of my arm and the upswing of my tail brought my father’s katana up the thorax of another. That Catrion slammed into another one, and pink Catrion blood oozed from each of the three Catrions.

A red stop sign appeared in my head. “Stop it!”

A Dragonfly flew inches from my head, dropping another glass sphere, this one blue. Again the colored smoke had no effect on me.

Enfuriated further, I snapped my scimitar to the side, away from my body, cutting the legs out from under three Catrions. My tail flicked the other direction, whacking a Catrion with the flat side of the katana; I felt the Catrion’s orange exoskeleton crack beneath the blow. In an aggressive change of direction, I brought the katana into the crevice between the top and middle sections of the Catrion next to the one that got slapped; it’s head rolled. Hoping for my scimitar to flow in its movement, I curved it up, intending to come down again and decapitate another Catrion.

My plan was foiled.

At the top of the arc, two Dragonflies with a cable between them swooped from the sky and caught my wrist in the cable, yanking it backwards. My feet lifted a few inches off the ground as I was carried backwards; the pain created by dangling from my wrist was indescribable. My ride was cur short when my heel met Victor’s rib cage and I tied my feet to his shoulder. The Catrions didn’t crash as I had hoped, but the additional weight kept them from going anywhere. Still though, they strained to keep the cable’s tension up.

Thinking I could cut the cable with my tail, I attacked it. The result was a sharp shooting pain down my arm, into my shoulder, and down my spine. Also, swinging at the restraint left me unprotected from the grounded Catrions.

I started killing all the Catrions my tail could reach. That gave me a chance to take my scimitar in my left hand and have that much more security.

On my first outward swing with the scimitar, two daredevil Dragonflies dove at me from behind; one went below my arm and the other above. Only when their cable cut a red gash in my arm did I realize that they’d caught me again.

Ignoring the tears streaming down my face as the Dragonflies attached to both my arms pulled in opposite directions, I fought merely to stay alive. The Dragonflies lifted me a foot off the ground; I felt like my arms were going to rip off.

A cable snapped around my tail, but this one didn’t have the same success. Without my commanding it to, my tail tossed the katana up, wormed out of the snare, caught the falling sword, and on the way down, drove it through the top of a Catrion.

The Dragonflies tilted me backwards so using my tail became increasingly difficult. Their strategy didn’t stop me from struggling on; my tail began striking low and to the side. Even when a third cable wrapped around my chest, constricting the blood flow to my already flaming arms, I fought ferociously. After a long battle, the Catrions managed to subdue me.

When that moment finally came, I was frustrated, crying, and still kicking. In front of me, two Dragonflies flew low, their wingtips almost touching the ground. Like many of their brethren, these Catrions carried a cable between them. There was no way for me to stop them, though I thought the katana made contact with one of them after they passed. Their cable hadn’t been aimed at my tail but it did eventually halt my tail’s movement because it coiled around my neck.

As light faded to dark, I wondered what my stupidity had gotten my friends and I into…