Find me.
I'm back in the Citlali corridor that isn't, staring at the same bulkhead, Dude perched on my shoulder.
Find me, she says, like she's the ultimate authority on what I should do. Like she knows better.
Typical Grea.
Maybe she does. That thing behind her eyes worries me, the lies wrapping around her, and that little voice of awareness whispering "Euvia".
The name stirs a memory of escape and loneliness, of leaving a half of me behind. It makes my heart ache with a pain that isn't mine, but I can't put a face to it, can't recall how I know her. Who is Euvia? And why does she make me think of fire and screaming? Why am I afraid?
The fear does not match the memory of loneliness, of being split in two, it's deeper than that, buried in a maze of confusion and dread, wrapped in sticky strands of darkness. It takes me awhile to dig it out but when I do, it's obvious the emotion isn't mine, that it's old, ancient even, and that brings with it a whole new set of questions. Who does it belong to? How'd they stick it in my head?
There's no answer, not even a niggle from the awareness in my gut, not even when I delve back into the eter and pry it apart. Nothing except a curious shimmer, like if I twisted my brain a little, I might see something new.
That reminds me of Aeotu, and Aeotu brings me back to the physical, to the fug cocooning my body.
I don't want to think about the alien ship, and yet... I flex the fug feet. There's no real way I can't think about it.
Dude hums and the sound soothes my nerves, spreading gold through my mind.
I flex my feet again, first one toe and then the other. The thick black-green talons pop from the tips, scraping against the steelcrete, right next to another, deeper furrow, one with the dried remnants of vomit crusted in the bottom.
Yeah.
I take a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth, and stare at the furrows.
Yeah.
If I had been thinking about Aeotu, about how Citlali's symbol just appeared, about all the things that happened before Core shoved me into that stasis unit... Disgust twists my insides. If I'd been thinking about all of those things instead of rushing around in circles, trying to find a way out of the endless corridor, freaking out over the fug-feet, if I'd listened to the awareness in my gut, I might have twigged a little sooner. Might have found Grea by now.
I'm on the alien ship. On Aeotu, and whatever it's done to me, it's probably done to Citlali.
To Mum. To Dad. And what about Grea? What has it done to her? What is she hiding from me?
Was this happening to her right now? Was she in the darkness somewhere, held down while Aeotu gave her fug-feet? Who else? Who else is still alive? Who else has fug-feet and fug-hands, who else hears that sibilant 'sister' shivering through the air? Who else is totally and utterly freaked out?
Who's going to save me?
Dude presses a tiny paw to my cheek, and I know, as if he's saying it, that he's saving me, and now I gotta go save Grea, because that's what little brothers do.
I heave out a breath, directing it upward so it flips the fringe dangling in my eyes. 'Yeah. Yeah, I know Dude, it's all on me.'
He pats my cheek.
The bulkhead SNAPS downwards, dumping me in a corridor as unlike the last as my fleshy self is to the fug-paws. It's not just the shape of the corridor, like an oval turned on its side, or the patterns etched in the curving bulkheads. It's the chaos.
A battlefield.
An alien battlefield.
These are not Citlali's corridors, not by a long shot; walls flow into ceilings and floors, no corners, no sharp lines except for the carvings. Intricate patterns cover every millimetre of the bulkheads, not just drawing the eye but sucking it in and holding it captive. It takes effort not to look, especially when the patterns appear to move, twisting and turning, like shadows melting one into the other.
Something in the pit of me, that awareness, whispers that the carvings have meaning, that I should pay attention, but I've been down that rabbit hole before and I'm not getting caught again. Especially not when scorch marks stain the pale grey walls, claw marks are gouged deep into the intricate carvings, and the deck is thick with ragged clumps of fug and the desiccated bodies of critters.
I crouch beside one clump, suddenly glad of the fug covering my hands as I dig through a pile of grey-green dust to uncover one of the little bodies. It's mostly skeleton with a few ragged bits of muscle and tendon strung between the bones. On my shoulder, Dude is silent for a moment, tension riding his body before he scurries down my arm and perches on the back on my hand, his gaze intent on the corpse.
I'm not sure if critters mourn the way we do. They have such short lives – scurrying around doing our dirty work – that I kind of wonder if they acknowledge death at all. A little part of me, deep in the back of my mind, wonders how long I'll have Dude. I've already lost him once. I don't want to do it again.
Dude is still studying the dead critter, tension clenching his muscles, but now he's reaching out to it, five sets of tiny claws sinking into the back of my hand as he stretches the sixth toward the corpse. He's barely touched it before he's shooting back up my arm, fur all sleeked out and his little muzzle pulled back in a snarl worthy of a rucnart.
'Dude?'
Wrongness emanates from the little guy, a muddy yellow that skitters up the back of my neck and has me snatching my hand back from the corpse, standing fast enough to give myself the spins.
I stare at the skeleton, fascination and dread gluing my gaze to it the same way spilled intestines might. It looks just like any other critter, not that I've seen many dead ones, but that wrongness… I shiver and back away, surveying the carnage with new eyes, attention catching anew on the furrows in the walls, the scorch marks next to them.
My heart leaps at the evidence of Citlali's crew, of kin claws and human flame-throwers, but questions crowd out the joy.
How long was I in the place where Onah and h'Rawd found me? But most important, when did the crew wake up and second… What happened here? To the critters, to the walls, to the fug? Were the crew fighting the critters? Were the critters fighting the fug? Were they all fighting each other?
Most of the fug is dead or dying, the vines dull and grey, some crumbled to dust, others patchy and torn, like critters have been chewing on them. Or fug. Grey-green dominates what's left of the nanite jungle, but there are splashes of red amongst the carnage, blooms of the same fug I saw in those last few moments before Core shoved me into the stasis unit. They tug at my memory, trying to pull something from the depths of my time in the darkness, flooding me with memories of hot breath and sharp teeth, of a tsunami of rage crashing through the psionic plane. Of Grea.
My heart's thumping, BANG BANG BANG against my ribs, squeezing out the air.
I don't want to remember. I don't want to—
Dude, his paw against my cheek, pushing the memories and the panic aside.
My heart slows and I breathe – in through the nose, out through the mouth. 'Thanks, Dude.'
He chitters and pats my chin.
I should probably be concerned about those memories, about what they mean, and I am – really, I am – but now's not the time for a panic attack. Not the time to contemplate why a rucnart would have their teeth at my throat.
At least the kin are alive, or were alive. At some point. How long was I out? I drag a hand over a bulkhead, fingers tracing the claw marks, hesitating over the red-brown splash of what looks like blood.
I have to find the crew.
Glows light the corridor, red and yellow and orange, where there's light at all, flashing and spitting. Most of it is dark, shadows piled atop shadows.
The fug-feet make no sound as I... pad, I guess I pad now. I guess I can even say I stalk, although that makes me think of h'Rawd and he makes me think of the claws that raked across Aeotu's walls, and that summons other memories, training memories, of ancient rucnarts stalking underground hallways that looked just like this one. Brings back the taste of Them, of white throats in my jaws, the musty taste of their blood, their screams as the water-kin crushed their minds.
Yeah. Stalking sounds cool until you remember that. So, not stalking, but still, the fug-feet don't just walk, there's a springiness in the ankle, a bounce that turns my regular human stride into something more, into something other.
Glide, let's go with glide.
I glide down the corridor, moving around crumbled sections of bulkheads and mounds of dull grey fug. Stepping nimbly over the remains of critters. And all of it happens without thinking, without me even really noticing. Those other senses, the ones I felt when I first became aware, play in the back of my mind, telling me things like the oxygen-nitrogen ratio and the rate of decay of the bodies on the deck. They tell me other things too, things that have no place, that spin in my brain looking for a home, some of them find meaning in parts of me that don't feel like me, like the fug-feet. And even though I can't understand it, I can sense the communication between them, and that... that doesn't disturb me like it should.
Not like the dark mountain of fur ahead.
I stop. Not just stop but freeze, every hair, every muscle, every fug-laden part of me still as the shadows around us.
I can't make out much in the dark, can't see more than the lumpy silhouette with its fuzzy outline, but an alarm is ringing in my head, a new surge of adrenalin dumped into my bloodstream. Fear colours the tension, brings with it the memory of hot breath and teeth, makes my shoulders hunch and my stomach knot, but it's all buried beneath the sudden painful focus of the Hunt.
The mountain doesn't move. It's sprawled across the corridor, the red and orange of flickering glows picking out bits of fur, highlighting the sharp points of ears and muscled limbs.
That awareness tells me it's not fug. For a moment, I wonder if it's one of Them, if somehow one of the aliens stayed behind when Aeotu was evacuated, somehow survived half a millennium floating in the depths of interstellar space on a ship slowly cannibalising itself.
But the awareness says no, tells me a story of biology too low in fat stores, of claws that are designed to climb trees and jaws to tear flesh from bones. Tells me too that the mountain breathes, that its heart beats faster since I opened the hatch. That it's waiting for me.
There's only one thing that climbs trees on the Citlali. A tree-kin.
In the back of my brain, the Hunt tenses, a warning that feels old, ancient like the sticky strands of darkness from before, ringing.
I push it aside.
'Hello?' The too-deep voice booms from my chest, and is swallowed by the bulkheads.
The mountain twitches, irritation blooming in the air around it. Relief blooms in my chest, which you might think is strange, but kin – tree-kin especially – aren't fans of verbal communication, and now I know it's not fug I'm talking to.
'Hey,' I say again. 'I know you're awake. I'm Kuma, I'm crew.'
I take a stiff, halting step forward. The fug-feet are fighting me, the Hunt is fighting me, wants me to stay put, to shut up and wait the other hunter out. But I can't, and they're my feet, Old Terra damn it, the fug's just hijacking them.
The mountain doesn't move but I sense the tension coming off it, a red-veined ripple in the air. The red smells of bloodlust and rage, and the Hunt rises, grips my insides and demands I halt.
I fight it, taking another shuddering step forward.
'Do you need help?' I say again.
A snarl. Bloodthirsty.
The rucnart rises. Slowly, one inch at a time. Shoulders first, then haunches, almost as if she's stretching. The last thing to rise is her head, swinging around, pinning me with all four eyes.
H’Lott. Tall and lean with a stumpy tail, her coat a hundred shades of orange-gold, perfect for blending into the harsh sands of Jørn's largest desert. She's a sub-matriarch, just below p'Ender in the clan. Only h'Rawd outranks her. Only h'Rawd is scarier.
She's never much liked those of us on two legs, always going out of her way to avoid us. I've only met her a few times, enough to know she reserves a special hatred for Grea and me. I'd once wondered if we'd done something, stepped on her paws or snatched her favourite protein slab, or if her hate was something we represented, an old memory she couldn't shake. Or maybe her dislike stemmed from years spent on a ship with humans. I guess now isn't the time to ask.
Menace drips from the gleam of her fangs, pushes outward from her eyes.
For a moment, a split-second, I remember my time in the dark, remember the scrape of teeth, the prickle of whiskers over my chin. It's just a moment, just a wobble, but it's all the Hunt needs to take me over.
One moment I'm all me with just this little bit of other talking in the back of my brain, and then I'm not. Or, kind of me but other too.
And that part, that other... Hate is the wrong emotion to describe what it feels, because it doesn't feel, doesn't hate like I know it, doesn't experience that volcano of emotion erupting from its core. What it experiences, both better and worse, is the drive not to destroy but annihilate, to leave nothing of h'Lott behind but blood and memory.
It rises through my bones, turning my muscles to steelcrete. Me, Kuma, the boy who loves critters and cried over a carpet of the dead fuzzbutts, who tried to save a dying rucnart. That boy is pushed aside. Buried. Encased in metal and left to pound against the walls of his cage.
I'm the Hunt now, and I remember fleeing before a wave of teeth and terror, of creatures that rose out of the ground and tore my creators apart with teeth and claws. Of others, unseen, who reached into the sister-brain and turned us into killers, made the creators sabotage and then abandon us.
I remember them.
I'm still here, still watching h'Lott snarl in the darkness, fear blooming in my gut, but the emote I should be summoning, should be rolling toward her on an inescapable wave of calm... it's stuck behind the anger surfing through my amygdala, triggering fight or flight hormones and turning my blood to ice.
Come and get it, that part of me says, the part that's Hunt, that feels nothing, no guilt, no remorse, and leaves nothing of its enemies behind.
The real me, the bit that's peering through the mask of the other, that bit flinches, wants to throw up.
H'Lott's snarl falters.
Opportunity. Hunt urges me forward.
The fug-feet glide, smooth, silent save for the NICK NICK of the claws.
She backs up. One step, two, every movement in sync with mine.
{{ Danger. }} The awareness flashes the word in my mind, presses on me the perception of another heat signature, another vibration in the decking.
But that bit of me that is Hunt is tangled up in the human me and it doesn't care. H'Lott is mine, this corridor is mine. Her flesh will tear beneath my claws, her teeth will crack on the armour growing over my shoulders and neck, and she will scream in that high, piercing death-yowl and—
A shadow, seen too late.
The awareness screams. {{ Danger! }}
I spin. H'Rawd leaping out of darkness, fangs and claws and the mad, mad blaze of his eyes.
No time to brace, only time to hang on, to dig fug-claws into fur as almost nine-hundred kilos of fury hits me in the chest.
What little bit of Kuma that was left is gone, there's just Hunt now, just the TH-THUMP of my heart, the rush of adrenalin, the cold hard embrace of the fug encasing my arms, my legs, my chest. The awareness pumps data into my brain, tells me about the vulnerable spot just behind the rucnart's skull. And now I'm twisting and turning, clinging to h'Rawd's neck, climbing onto his back, and the hand-claws are no longer claws, but blades, matt-green and curved, springing from the backs of my hands. I lift one over my head, that vulnerable spot clear in my mind's eye—
A roar. A weight slamming into my side.
The deck. The constellation of Kuma going off in front of my eyes. The cage around the real me cracks, and for a moment I am Kuma, just Kuma and then rage blasts through me. H'Lott's and h'Rawd's rage. All of it hitting me in the chest, blending one into the other until there's no telling which emotion belongs to whom, or if they're mine.
They are all mine. Once I feel them, I know them, they belong to me, they answer to me, roll over and play dead for me. Never piss off an empath, that's all I'm going to say, especially not one rocking a new internal other.
I gather the emotion into a ball, draw it into my chest and whisper to it, listen to its secrets, the loose threads of thought and memory it drags from its hosts. Images of betrayal, memories of death, flashes of grief, the need to protect and avenge. I grow it, nurture it, turn it around and tell it a different story, one of fear, one of defeat. And then I throw it back.
H’Lott collapses, her weight pinning my legs to the deck, while h'Rawd freezes, his eyes, all four of them, wide, his head up and throat exposed.
Victory pumps through my veins, gives me the strength to rise, to grab a dying fug-vine, to pump energy into it, to draw it back and—
My muscles seize, holding me fast.
Gold sinks through my brain, pushing back the rage, fracturing the walls of the cage that keep Kuma contained.
I'm me again. Hunt is gone, and with it my energy. The fug-vine crumbles to dust and my back hits the deck. Exhaustion is dragging at my bones, hunger clawing at my belly, but at least it's not h'Lott's teeth. Not yet at least.
H’Rawd shakes, a violent full-body movement like he's trying to dislodge old biogel from his fur. In a way he is, but an emote is harder to get rid of than that, calls on things buried deep within and sticks to them, an industrial-grade psionic nano-glue.
Another reason the kin don't like empaths. Although they always seemed to get along with Grea well enough, so it's probably just me.
Determination and anger radiate from h'Rawd, pulsing outward, but the defeat and that sinking, sickening fear still has him tight in its grip.
'I'm crew.' My voice is scratchy, hoarse.
He snarls, legs shaking as he stalks closer.
I hold up a hand, not entirely sure what I'm going to do, how I'm going to stop an angry tree-kin with my legs pinned. 'I'm—'
"Crew" gets stuck on my lips as Dude rushes up my arm and leaps right at h'Rawd's bared fangs.
I don't know how he does it, but somehow, instead of becoming critter bait, Dude is sitting on the tree-kin's snout, clinging to the bridge of his nose and staring him in the eye. Not the lower ones, mind, but the upper ones, that ones the kin open just before they turn you into a psionic shish-kabob.
And Old Holy Terra, h'Rawd doesn't eat him.
In fact... Are h'Rawd's ears rising? Is his muzzle un-wrinkling?
I think my jaw is on the floor, mouth open wide enough for Dude to hop in there.
What is the little guy doing?
The eter is a thought away, and now I'm seeing everything overlaid with a rainbow of emotion. Is that chastisement in h'Rawd's aura? Actual chastisement, staining the psionic plan a pink-ish yellow. I take a good look at Dude and—
My heart freezes up. Dude's different from other critters, able to do things that he shouldn't. I've known that for a while, had it hammered home when he found his way into the Aer, the dream space where the kin create their own version of Jørn but this... The bright golden halo surrounding the fuzzball has the strength of a sun. It's too bright to look at, and it radiates from his core, the edges fading to a tear-inducing orange.
Not even Onah has an aura like that. Not even the Regan, glimpsed in the dramatisation of training memories burned as bright as this genetically-engineered janitor barely the size of two clenched fists.
At some point while I floated in the stasis unit/escape pod and the years in the wherever-the-fuck-it-was, Aeotu gave me fug-feet, Dude got an upgrade.
A serious upgrade.
Fuck.
From the way shock is spilling around h'Rawd's paws – a colourless sparkly wave – I'm guessing he's thinking the same thing.
Dude jumps off the rucnart's face onto my shoulder.
H’Rawd's gaze follows, and still that sparkle is spilling around his paws, but turning solid, shock becoming consideration. All four of his eyes meet mine, and he stares at me.
Double fuck.
I don't move. Don't even bolster my shields, don't breathe. Don't do anything save gather every last speck of myself and hold it close, ready to run.
In the face of certain annihilation it is the only appropriate response, or at least, that's what I'm telling myself. The fug has other ideas. I can feel it crawling over my body, thickening around my neck, my fingers lengthening into claws.
Go. H'Rawd's voice booms in my head, a command sphere unfolding along with it, planting instructions in my brain. I don't know exactly what's in it, but purpose ripples down my spinal cord, makes my feet itch with the need to move.
I'm guessing there's another part of the command sphere keeping my mouth shut, bottling up the questions that want to burst out of me, because I'm silent as h'Rawd wraps his forelegs around h'Lott's unconscious form and lifts her.
As soon as her weight is gone, I scoot backward, the command pressing me to move, but still I can't quite—
They need to see you, he says.
"You" is loaded with meaning, an image of Kuma, the boy I was before, and a separate one, of me as I am now, a strange amalgamation of fug and flesh. There's something else there too, a hidden meaning, but… "They" has just exploded on my brain, carrying an image of crew, of Mum and Dad huddled over a workbench, a huge holo lighting up the centre.
Really, h'Rawd shoulda just led with that.