Mum's standing in the shuttle bay looking like Grea took the shuttle and smacked her in the face. Dad's next to her, looking the same and Onah...
Honestly, I never really thought the air-kin cared about Grea that much. I mean, he's always cared about me, in his own way, but the emotion coming off him now...
I double-down on my shields. There's too much emotion in the air and not enough of me left to care.
Or maybe there's too much of me left. Too much raw skin and heartache, too much feeling. I want to explode out of my flesh, want to run through Citlali's corridors screaming. I've done so much, so much has been done to me, that this part, the part where I get to fall into my parents' arms and go to sleep beside my twin, it should be easy. And I guess it would be, if I got it at all.
But all I can see is Grea gunning the shuttle, all I can feel is that slimy, creeping madness looking out of her eyes, using her voice and leaving me behind.
Always leaving me behind.
Brother.
I ignore it, tighten my shields, give them forcefields and coat them in lava.
Brother.
No. I twist the forcefield, turn it into a beam of light and shoot it at the kaleidoscope on the edge of my eter.
Except it's not coming through the eter, not entirely.
The umbilicus pulses with Aeotu's presence. Hunt is behind her, and there is urgency in its touch, pushing Aeotu forward.
Brother. Danger. Darkness rolls behind her, carrying words and impressions that make my eyes cross and slip over my brain without touching it. Things too alien for me to comprehend.
Hunt though... Hunt gobbles it up, its processors whirring, spinning images in my brain, little bits and pieces that don't make sense. Strange fragments of tubes and vines that remind me of fug, if fug were smooth and round, with sharp edges and—
The images SNAP together, forming a whole that makes my heart sink. 'The FTL engines.'
Dad turns. 'What about them?'
Aeotu/Hunt are still speaking, shoving more and more information at me. And Old Terra help us, it's coming together and that sinking feeling, it doesn't encompass what Grea has done, what she's left us with. What she's planning.
But why? Why does she want to blow up Citlali?
Why? I send the thought winging through the void, chasing after my twin. There's no answer, and I wish there were, something to wipe away the horror taking over my anima.
'Kuma?' Hands on my shoulders, jerking me around, pulling me face-to-forehead with Dad. 'Kuma,' he says again. 'What about the engines?'
There's fear in his voice, in his grip; knowledge too, an awful kind of inevitability.
Somehow, some way, Dad already knows what Aeotu is telling me, what the AI has only just discovered.
'How?' I ask him. 'How do you know what she did?'
It's an interesting thing when Dad pales. The blood leaves his skin, takes the warm, rosy flush out of his cheeks, leaves his lips the colour of death and turns the flesh under his eyes the colour of old blood. His fingers might as well be bone digging into my biceps, trying to scoop out the marrow in my bones.
'It was Grea.' The statement is soft. Dad's looking at me, but his gaze is clouded by the images behind his eyes, and his aura... I've never seen one break like that, split right down the middle and collapse. Heartbreak. You learn something new every day, I just wish I didn't have to learn it from Dad.
Over his shoulder, Mum's aura is the same. Dark and split.
Dad shakes himself. 'The FTL engines have been rigged to overload. We don't know how, some kind of amalgamation of Their tech and ours.'
'You thought it was me.' It's an accusation. Hurt is blooming in my chest, you wouldn't think there was room, or that I'd be used to it, but there's a Grea-sized hole in my anima now. Plenty of room for other things.
Dad doesn't answer with words, his eyes tell it all, catching on Dude perched on my shoulder, sliding off the fug.
I step back.
There's resistance, just a tiny bit, Dad's grip tightening before he lets go, hands dropping to his sides. Still not looking at me.
'Yeah. The kid with the strange appendages must be the one planning to blow up the home he tried to save.'
'Kuma...' Mum steps up beside Dad. I wait for her to say something, to find the words to soothe the hurt bits, the way mums do. She just stares at me.
It's my turn to look away. I want to keep looking, to force them to see me, not the fug crawling over my body, but that just makes the hurt boil, makes it harder to hold in the words that want to spew from my mouth, the ones that'll hurt. I'll make sure they hurt, load them up with all the shit inside and fire them not just at my parents, but at everyone; the kind of destructive emote that makes people fear me. The kind that sticks inside and doesn't let go, not for a year, not for a month, not for a millennium. The kind that changes an entire species.
The kind the water-kin used against Them.
I swallow the urge, step back and turn away. 'I'll go get her, make her stop it.'
Too late. Aeotu's voice echoes, not just in my head or through the umbilicus, but in my ears.
Mum's looking around, hope wiping away the worry on her brow. 'Core? Is that you?'
No.
'It's Aeotu. Core's dead.' The words are mine and they're cold. The fact that Aeotu has found a way into the comms doesn't surprise me, I've heard it before after all, and besides, while Grea's absence has left room for shit, there's none for the alarm I might have felt otherwise. Besides, Mum should know that. She's been trying to resurrect Citlali's AI for long enough.
You'd think I was in a graveyard the way the faces around me drain of colour.
Not surprising. First, they're confronted with a son who's not quite Jørgen anymore and then the being who remade him is hijacking their systems and telling them the world is falling down. If that's not bad enough, there's Mac, dropping from the ceiling three decks above like it ain't nothing, all fugged out, faceplate down, whorls and lines moving under his armour.
It has spread. Cannot save sister—
'Citlali.' That's Mac, translating for Mum before the confusion has thought about crossing her face. 'You have to evacuate.'
Silence.
I'm not sure if it's because they're too busy staring at the dark grey humanoid with Mac's voice, or if they're processing what he just said. I know I am, but for them... For them it's probably both.
In the back of my head I'm remembering another voice, another face, 'stasis separation' ringing in my ears. We all know how that went.
No. Not again.
Mum's saying things about air filters and bio-sponges, all the words adding up to the same thing. They can't. What she really means is 'they won't'. All the junk about pollen counts and oxygen ratios can't cover up the revulsion in her aura. Can't hide the dismay as Mac's faceplate retracts and they see him for the first time. The boy who used to spend so much time in our living room he was practically family.
I'm not listening anymore. I'm cutting myself off from the torrent of emotion filling the shuttle bay and doing what I need to do. What no one else can.
I'm going after Grea.
I'm going to stop her from blowing up Citlali.