Ignoring the slick grime that caused my joints to stick, I slipped through the ruined marketplace, a small bazaar of interconnected storefronts and discarded kiosks. There were signs of recent travel or use from people: discarded food that had not yet fallen to rot, strips of fabric too nice to have been left out here to dry for that long, and the occasional smell of embers from a recent fire. My eyes scanned for where they may have gone, but from prior experience, they were just as likely to have retreated into the upper floors of any buildings as they were to any excavated tunnels below. It was paramount for many communities these days to only interact with the public when strictly necessary.
As inconspicuously as possible, I forced fresh tears to fill my eyes and readied myself to drop into a defenseless crouch. If anyone saw me, I'd look every bit the scared little boy I should be in this situation, and I needed that bit of subterfuge to make it through the assignment. I didn't have a lot of time to make the right impression, before everything turned to shit.
The sun was peeking from below the horizon as night threatened to fall. What infrastructure remained to provide light to a dreary, nearly abandoned city flickered to life as the minute drove near, but for every light that remained, three had been scavenged for spare parts or to serve makeshift light fixtures within whatever counted as a home these days. Foreboding shadows stretched across the city's damaged streets and ruined walkways. Everywhere but maybe the Capital looked like this these days, and even that wasn't in pristine condition.
Nearly ready to give up looking in this sector, I stopped in my tracks and shared a glance with the first person I'd seen in over an hour: a pair of large, tearful eyes hiding behind a pane of glass and stamped wooden boards. When they realized they'd been seen, they hesitated and then darted away with a shuffle of fabric, vanishing behind fortifications that would do nothing to save them from the coming threat.
"Hey, hey! I don't- can you spare some food?" I called out as I approached the squat building that had once served as a dance studio. "I'm hungry, and I haven't eaten in-"
A distant, grumbling roar.
Almost too low to hear, but I was listening for it.
If the people living here thought things were bad here now, they had no idea what was coming.
"Please, I'm starving! I don't know where my dad is," I swiped back a real tear, "and I don't wanna be out here at night. Please, please, please!"
I pounded on the doorway with enough force to split the wood.
Sold the desperation. Emphasized the strength I had in this new life compared to the old, and I wasn't even trying.
A panel below the window opened with a shifting of material, and a small hand reached up into the light before a larger one pulled it back.
"Come in, come in." Hushed whispers.
A pair of women ushered me inside, neither of them possessing horns yet. With them, a girl with darker skin who couldn't be older than seven. They were her eyes I saw in the window, and the gaunt little girl should not have to live like this.
They shoved the panel back into place and within moments, they'd trusted too much. They seated me at a table and slid a bowl of lukewarm soup in front of me, its scent wonderful. I surveyed the room quickly while they exchanged hushed greetings, introduced themselves, and shooed away any apprehensive onlookers. Within the dance-studio-turned-bunker, there was only one who had a visible Exception, her forked tail covered in barbs. The rest eyed me with distrust, and I refused to meet the hopeful gaze of the youngest assembled, the little girl who was so close to malnutrition that she'd likely never develop any Gifts, if she had them.
"Son, why are you wandering the streets alone?"
I frowned in a practiced motion, not looking up to meet their discerning faces. The two women settled in across from me, while the little girl remained glued to my side like a lost puppy. She was the youngest here, but there was no one else even close to her age. Most were verging on the elderly and the infirm, though it was hard to tell with Osmosians.
I had a few options on how to take this, how to answer her question. I wasn't looking for a place to hide, I wasn't looking for a place to shelter, I wasn't looking for a new survivor group to align with. I already had aligned myself with the best chance that anyone would have to stop this, to save Osmos V. I didn't need to ingratiate myself to the group, like others might have done, because I honestly did not have the time.
"This is all I've known for years," I lied, thinking on the information that I'd learned about this frontier town. "Ever since that day my school exploded, I've been fending for myself."
The woman with kind blue eyes and no ridges around them reached forward to take my hand. "Were you a student at Central?" I crossed my arms more tightly around my torso. "You poor dear."
Central was one of two schools in the area and had, a few months back, been the site of a battle between a so-called "horde" of aliens and the Scarlet Scarab. It was just one of many sites of horror that Xandros had inflicted upon his own people in the guise of a false invasion, and I would not fucking stand for it any longer.
"How have you all made it this long?"
This was, hopefully, one of many groups of survivors within the community that remained. From what intelligence I'd gathered and been allowed to see, frontier towns like this one were hotbeds of activity. Missing or dead people, victims of alien attacks, a stage for the Reach and the Triarchy to wage battle against the invasion, and the altogether crumbling aftermath of "order" they supposedly leave behind. The slow approach toward total anarchy had long accelerated to a near certainty.
"I found good people," I answer truthfully. "The best people. A bunch of brains, a bunch of brawn, all gathered together. A group who grow by the day, by the week, by the month." I reach into a pocket and produce a single slip of paper and pass it to the pair of women. Several of the onlookers step forward to try to peek at its contents. "We can always use more folks, folks like you." My eyes scanned the room and settled on the one with the Exception, her tail flexing with apprehension. "Every able-bodied fight-"
"You want us to believe this?" "You're a traitor the Triarchs!" "Turn him in!" "He's just a boy!"
The cacophony of voices all scrambled to speak at once, and their volumes dimmed when my upper torso became the same material as the table. I reached down with fingers made of plastic and pulled up my pant leg, revealing a thick scar from a plasma burn.
The same plasma burns that killed my mother.
"I'm fighting for you, for me, for all the people I've lost, and the people you've lost."
"You shouldn't-"
"Shouldn't what?" I challenged. "There are more than a dozen people in this room. There might be a hundred folks left in this town, maybe more if you've been exceptionally lucky, and I'm going to break you of that notion now- you haven't been lucky."
I hold up the slip of paper for the rest to see, a faded photograph of a dinosaur-like alien ripping a building to shreds. It was easily twenty or so feet tall, and that was on its whim.
"One of these is on its way here. You don't have the weapons to take it down, and unless one of you has the Gift like me, you don't have the powers either." I gesture in its vague direction. "You have maybe an hour, tops, before its rampage reaches this building, and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
The reactions were mixed, difficult, and immediate. Fear, anger, frustration, hesitation – all bubbled to the surface.
"What are we supposed to do?"
"Flee," I explained simply. "Run as far and as fast as you can. Get to the southwestern edge of town, right where the desert starts."
"We can't just run into the desert!" a portly man shouted, so different from the rest that I wondered if he'd be hoarding food. "Why are we listening to this?"
"Your group can't have this place all to yourselves!"
"You looters are despicable."
I snap my fists together, frustrating building in my own mind. "I am not anything of the sort. You have but one option – listen to me or die to that thing out there."
Hesitation gripped several of the individuals, many showing signs of the same malnutrition that the girl possessed. Once the Capital abandoned the social infrastructure that supported towns on the frontier like this, they had to fend for what they had, and what they had wasn't enough. There were dozens of communities like this one, who've already collapsed or were on the brink of collapse.
"Sounds more like die now or die later. We'll starve!"
"You already are."
That shut the most resistant up.
"My people are waiting just outside of town to escort any survivors to safety. Vehicles, food, supplies, medicine – we have it all. If you're concerned about your options, you should be, but you've truly got one option, one choice. If you choose to not listen to that, maybe the alien will get bored or hungry before he rips you apart, or before this place collapses on you."
I slipped another piece of paper from my belt and unfurled it, revealing a grotesque image of the aftermath of this creature's path. A Jula-drone took the picture from the air, showing a debris field miles wide.
"This is what you're facing. Every minute you waste now is a minute you waste getting the hell out of here."
The picture was what did it, was what spurned many of them to action. A couple of holdouts looked at me with mistrust but Osmosians were just as much social primates as humans were: they stuck with their in-group, and most were listening out of sheer fear more than anything else.
The little girl clutched at my hand and pulled me with her, squeezing it for comfort while she packed a small bag with her own belongings. She mumbled her name to me in greeting, but I was too busy noticing that she'd packed a knife alongside a couple of toys and other small but useful items. I was proud of her and the person who taught her.
Within minutes, they'd largely packed their things and were ready to follow me. Two chose to stay, and I wished them luck.
This crop for Carnifex would be somewhat useful even if only five or six managed to stick around after they got to safety, and I felt encouraged as I led them out into the marketplace once more. The pathway out was largely marked in my head, and I scrounged beneath the muck-covered grate on the way to retrieve the real bag I'd left behind right before I started on this assignment. Couldn't be too careful that I'd find looters instead of survivors, and the gear in here was too valuable to lose.
The little girl, whose name she'd brightly declared was Marcilia, stuck as close to me as she could, cradling a wooden doll in her hand. Her shoes were muggy, and her steps were awkward from emaciated muscles. I'd seen far too much over these few months, and she was too close to falling like many others had.
"Take this, get some energy."
A small portion of bread from my bag became her next meal, chewing on it as she walked. It was more cracker than dinner roll, but it was the best the cooks could do for anyone on short notice for any kind of travel assignment. I ate the rest of it, knowing I'd need the calories to fight effectively, should I need to.
"How much farth-"
A building toppled in the distance, a pile of dust rising up into view. A woman amidst the group screamed, and I heard someone mutter that the Triarchy would send someone soon, that they'd manage to stop it before all was lost.
I don't break their hopeful spirit.
"We'll need to go this way!" I directed them down a different thoroughfare, one that would form a wide looping arc around a likely radius of destruction. The dinosaur monster had already passed through this space, and the resulted debris from collapsed shops, grumbled garages, and sunken government complexes did nothing to improve the mood. "Keep your heads down! If it sees you, it's probably too late, so move. quickly."
Minutes passed of pure tension, and I only held back from pulling out the Jula-drone because I could tell where we were. If things became any less clear, I'd need it to guide our passage.
Thankfully, it hadn't been needed, but our luck fizzled as we reached sight of the edge of the city. A hundred meters.
A nearby tower shook, its supporting structural integrity failing and leaving a heap of material to block the street behind us. Dust covered the slowest of the survivors, Marcilia screamed in terror, and the alien leaped through the cloud in a move that proved its strength ten-fold. Where it landed, stone cracked from the force of its impact and a nearby window shattered.
A quick voice command threw a Jula-Drone into the air to guide the group, its chrome body blinking with light as it unfurled into an almost spider-like design. Each limb mimicked mine as I gestured frantically for them to follow it, half of its metallic tendrils sporting scanners to help guide its path.
In the same moment, I mimicked the metal of nearby debris with a quick tap, the coating to my body spreading completely and increasing my own resilience. I had no idea if it would be enough, but it would buy them – and my allies - time. A hundred meters was nothing, and a bit more beyond that to connect to my allies.
I released my held breath, and the rampaging alien snarled as I stayed behind, slitted eyes flickering between the group and me.
My running leap and forceful fist impact sent the surprised reptilian alien back several feet, skidding across sand-covered pavement. A mere half-second was all it took for it to recover from the blow, and I rolled through the next motion to barely avoid a tail that tried to intercept me. I had to be agile, I had to use my size, I had to keep out of harm's way as much as possible.
Not wanting to give the creature a single chance to catch his bearings, I leaped up and to the right, landing atop a fourth-floor balcony with a single bounce.
C'mon, follow me!
The alien rolled through the ground floor beneath where I stood, and the balcony began to collapse as a supporting wall turned to dust. Holding my footing through sheer luck, I ripped at the metal railing with ease, releasing it from its bounds. This… this'll work, I told myself.
As I fell, I swiped quickly with the railing to wrap the metal around his neck, pulling it taut like a solid, angular leash. In anger, it pulled immediately at the makeshift bindings and ripped them apart with ease. Before I'd even landed back on my feet, he tossed the shards like a shotgun round, the material peppering against my crossed arms and cutting through armor.
It did not work.
The creature bounded for me, lifted me in its grasp, and readied a throw that might end its arc in the upper atmosphere.
I would not survive that.
Heart pounding in my chest, I gripped its scaled arm with my bare palm and pulled.
The alien exhaled in agony, a roar that shook my eardrums, and it fell to its knee in weakness.
Energy, material, DNA – all of it available at the touch of a hand, a grazing of the skin. With such a grip, the alien's strength, endurance, and ability to expand or retract in size became mine. With each second that passed, the alien would grow weaker and weaker until-
A knee impacted with my abdomen so forcefully I began seeing stars. Forced to let go, I struggled to recover from the strain, noting the significant damage to the material I'd absorbed even with its stolen strength.
It was the alien's wooziness from the drain that gave me a moment of advantage. I pressed my newfound strength into a full-scale assault. A metallic uppercut launched the alien across the street and through a stone barrier in a shower of dust, easily the strongest I'd ever been on borrowed power.
A grin crossed my lips.
Before it could recover, I jumped with increased strength, landed on its chest heel-first, and knocked the breath from its lungs.
"Give up, you brute!"
There was no point in talking to them. Carnifex had discovered that long ago. These aliens had intelligence, but there was more than a language barrier. They lacked reason. State-backed media claimed there had been talks, that there had been discussions, but it wasn't true. The Reach had done something to them to make them lose their way, for aliens that should otherwise be able to speak.
I tried to pull away, but a furious swat of its fist batted me away. What surprised me as much as it surprised the alien was that I only moved a few feet instead of several dozen yards. This thing… this thing was strong, and until this borrowed power faded, maybe I could actually do something.
I glanced quickly in the direction of the retreating refugees, and they'd crossed from street to sand. The beeping of the retreating drone was a signal to me as much as it was to gathered Carnifex support, and I had to keep fighting this thing for as long as I could. Within seconds, vehicles would be coming from their hidden places to extract the group.
With an angry roar, the alien expanded to the size of a small building.
With a concentration on whatever connection I felt to this alien's abilities, I fucking matched him.
Within seconds, I'd become the size of a two-story building. The enemy was bigger, thicker, and tougher, but it wasn't growing any larger. Neither could I, but I had to try.
A flick of my wrist tossed a support column the size of an oak tree at the dinosaur, and it collided against its hide and broke into dozens of pieces. I bounded toward it to grapple the creature, but it grappled into me instead, forcing me onto my back and crushing four abandoned vehicles just from my size alone. A gouging fissure was left in our wake, the street forever ruined.
I punched once, twice, three times at his reptilian face, so hard that the metal I'd absorbed cracked from the effort. It was rocked, but not down, and I knew ultimately that, pound for pound, it was still stronger than me. The Gift had limits to how much it could absorb and for how long.
I shrunk to dodge the haymaker that would have surely left me a pile of gore, a crater in the earth left behind where it struck. A kick to its side did nothing to harm it and did everything to push me away, and I rolled onto my feet with a heavy exhale.
I did the best thing I could do.
I ran.
Debris exploded in my direction as the tall creature bounded after me. I wheeled my body to the side and avoided a tail that skewered a vehicle in a shower of glass and metal. With as much force as I could muster, I bounded over a mid-size building in a single jump, landed in a rolling crouch atop its roof, and then leaped again toward the desert.
The apartment complex did next-to-nothing to slow the wanna-be kaiju, but I didn't need it to.
The second my feet touched the sandy wasteland of the Magnus Desertus, my allies were moving into position. A hovering rover sped over the nearby dunes and crossed the distance toward me. Others of Carnifex were hastily escorting refugees into their only means of escape, while some moved into position to assist. Covering fire from ballistics and plasma rifles – some stolen and modified with Reach tech – blasted into the creature and its path. A shower of heat, sparks, and gunfire would not stop the alien, but we didn't need to.
We only needed to outrun it.
We had the means.
As soon as the last of the survivors strapped into place, the Osmosian rebels joined them. I slid into the opened back hatch of a rover that did not hesitate to immediately kick into high gear, and if not for Marcilia's quick reaction to grab hold of my arm, I might have fallen into the dunes behind.
It was following.
It was fast. Each bounded leap carried it closer to us, and with each passing second, the weakness I'd created through the absorption would fade. It would get faster, and it only needed to catch one of the rovers to make the whole thing pointless.
We needed… one more advantage.
An idea!
"Deploy the drones!" I shouted.
The tactic that had allowed me to escape the canine alien: sacrificing the weather drone that Adrius and Felixus had brought with them that night.
Five drones launched into the air and began firing their automated turrets. Plasma peppered into the alien as they moved like a veritable storm, and if there was any intelligence in the thing left at all, it would ignore them. They didn't have the ordinance to even damage the creature's skin more than mild burns, but its attention left the retreating convoy.
We'd done it.
We'd made it.
I patted the little girl on the shoulder, and it was all worth it to see the smile on her face.
OSMOS V
January 06, 19:09 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE THREE
The Reach Ambassador liked to think that he was a patient man.
He had much to show for his favor of that approach. His previous assignment to spread the Reach's intergalactic influence had been a rousing success after nearly a decade of careful manipulation, and they had not had to fire a single shot against the Lepidopterran homeworld. That success bought him the chance for a new assignment: Osmos V.
Truthfully, the Empire had not realized what a gem this planet's resources were. No, it was not in natural resources or even artificial resources. Instead, it was in genetic resources. The meat on this planet was far, far more than what anyone had predicted, and his superiors were incredibly happy with the results. Even now, there were Osmosians sent to the four corners of the Empire and beyond, to extend the Reach across the cosmos.
As patient as he had been and as resourceful as the planet was, that approach had cost him dearly on a few fronts. It had been important to them, in those initial discussions, not to spoil the meat with a planetary war, to bring down their superior firepower onto the populace and force them to capitulate. That task, then, was of course given to the Ambassador, and he'd managed for so long to remain patient, vigilant, and successful.
That patience had cost them too much meat. In the long run, it mattered little: breeding camps were already in place to ensure that they'd continue to develop the Osmosian Gifts and Exceptions that made them so useful to an intergalactic cause they should beg to continue. In the short run, open rebellion had led to loss of life and good stock, and the false invasion they'd instituted as a cover for their true aims had killed many.
The most frustrating source of his impatience had been increasingly frustrating as of late.
A Reach Technician with a worried look across his yellow-plated insectoid face entered the room and passed a chitinous screen to their leader. "Another successful broadcast across the extranet. They managed to repeat the message four times across all major networks before we thwarted it."
The Ambassador cursed as the message played across the screen. An Osmosian woman – one they'd been monitoring long before she'd directly become a thorn in their side – followed in the footsteps of her traitorous family and had quickly become the public face of the movement. She'd managed these broadcasts more than once across the last few months, and they'd only increased in frequency.
"To all citizens of the Triarchy and the United Cities, I am Jula. Like you, I have lost many of my closest relatives and friends. Know that you are not alone. Know that your government has failed you. Know that you need not be afraid, know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Carnifex will remove the Reach's influence from this planet and will bring justice to the Triarchs who invited these invaders to our planet. They are responsible for all that has wronged us, and we will take our planet back!"
Images accompanied the message displaying their evidence, which was a new development in these broadcasts and one that concerned the Ambassador immensely. One of them – and he didn't know how they'd managed to do it – was brand new and displayed a clear image of the fleet the Reach had hidden beneath the planet's oceans, inaccessible with this planet's level of technology. The image showed dozens of ships, not even a fraction of what they possessed overall, but enough to complicate many, many things.
"The Reach have a space-capable fleet and the numbers and technology to turn the tide in the invasion, but they have not intervened to put a stop to it! What does that tell you? This is no conspiracy theory, this is fact, Osmosians. You are mere puppet-"
The broadcast had ended there, and the Ambassador cursed his patience.
OSMOS V
January 07, 07:05 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE THREE
Sweat dripped from my pores in a slick sheen. Heavy breath flowed in and out of my chest. Knuckles cracked with nervous need.
"Again."
At the sound of the command, I slipped into a readied stance alongside twelve others. Men, women, children – we could no longer afford to discriminate. Every hand – with few limits – could be useful to the resistance, and I was both excited and mournful at the prospect.
I'd argued so long for some semblance of respect. When it finally came – when I was finally trusted to actively contribute to the state of the world?
It did not just apply to me.
I was almost four years older than the eight year old girl within the bunker's isolated training chamber, who followed the same repeated training motions that I did. Marcilia, a girl I'd rescued. She had no Gift nor Exception. Perhaps a mutation would develop, perhaps it would not, but they trained everyone they could with hand-to-hand and small arms. Bruises lined her arms from the tough regimen, and she was so skinny that I thought she might faint at any moment.
Early in the resistance effort, none of this had been necessary. Carnifex had smaller aims and operated with smaller numbers. Small squads of three to four would exterminate targets, infiltrate the Legions, and scout uncontrolled territories. The extent of the false invasion had not yet been clear, nor were the scale of its consequences. We knew better now and had to change.
Aggregor, the leader of this training – and the ultimate leader of the resistance – calmly stepped between us to make suggestions, discourage laziness, and improve form. He wore no shirt, which showed the extent of his physique and the lengths of his devotion to the cause. Numerous scars from burns and gashes stretched across his chest and back, some reaching as high as his neck. The tell-tale signs of a Reach plasma weapon burn were the worst example, mirroring my own scarred flesh on the back of my right shin. A painful reminder.
It was Aggregor's influence over the former Carnifex leaders that forced him to take over and to introduce every able-bodied warrior they could into our plans. Those days had been tense, but Carnifex evolved into a fighting force that might actually manage. Would allowing children a chance to fight make a difference in the battles to come?
They already had. Children like myself had been useful in scouting missions, recruitment drives, and espionage. No one suspected a child.
Aggregor loomed over me. I rose to meet his eyes, despite the fact that I was short for even an eleven year old. That much had not changed during my second life.
"Your stance is too wide."
I considered it for half a second. "No, because a wider stance means I'm less likely to-"
"Too wide," he repeated.
Aggregor did not remain in position to see if I corrected it. He was not that kind of teacher, and I appreciated the comment all the same. He moved on to address what I felt were more serious concerns: a forty-year old woman who bore signs of early pregnancy leaned at a dangerous angle with her sidearm, firing her blaster poorly and inaccurately toward the glass target at the end of the range.
I repeated the motions as I watched him work, marveling at the difference a simple comment from him made in her progress. The man was charismatic, and I wondered not for the first time why he wasn't trusted someone else within the ranks of Carnifex's veterans to train us.
I got the opportunity to ask him when we next rested, the sound of soothing music playing from the bunker's loudspeaker. "Why isn't Darien leading the session today?" The woman had largely been training operatives for weeks, and she hadn't been at her post. Perhaps that was the answer, but Aggregor could certainly ask someone else to take over.
The man wiped sweat from his forehead with the edge of his collar. "Darien has an extended assignment overseas, and others are in place or pre-occupied. At the end of the day, understanding your progress is key to our success."
"And where are we striking next?"
I'd heard talk to try to take Vicendis, the only city-state that held a candle of threat to the Triarchy's Capital during the pre-Reach days. Perhaps that was where Darien had gone, to join with that effort. The goal was simple, but the means complex: remove Reach influence over that city and establish order, and there'll be others who flock to it as an example. The Triarchy had invited the Reach into their good graces, and I wouldn't stop until I proved to everyone who would listen they should be ousted.
Aggregor confirmed my suspicions but gave little information about how it would be done.
"Are we trying to encourage those with powers to riot?"
That method had worked previously in a couple of notable instances, from what I could recall, but that was a short term solution to a long term problem.
Aggregor did not answer.
"Carpet bombing?"
Aggregor did not answer.
"Subterfuge?"
No answer.
As much as I had been trusted to do something, I had not been trusted to do everything, to know everything. I didn't need to be.
Moving against Vicendis was big, I could feel it. They typically shared more, revealed more about their aims to even an almost twelve-year-old nuisance. Maybe, just maybe, it would be the turning of the tide.
PLUMBER SECTOR HOUSE, FRONTIER SPACE
January 10, 19:09 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE THREE
A single, miniscule ping of alert on the scanners changed everything.
A routine operation, one designed to monitor the communications of any planets within this Sector of Frontier Space. Its many systems were typically inactive without a conduit agent to directly witness and access its records, beyond the bare minimum of function. This region had not had a reported interaction with its assigned agent for years, but that was not atypical depending on the assignment. Sometimes, this Sector House's attendant artificial intelligence could go years without a report, due to the vastness of Frontier Space compared to the patrolled Sectors of the Known Universe.
No, communications were routinely inspected through installations of its Plumber agent, Gabriel Vasquez. By the time of his last report, Vasquez had been focused on Osmos V, and many of the sensors he'd established in secret were now working in overtime. One such inspection sparked renewed interest in the AI, and there were clear protocols in place that it could utilize.
Communications were clear: the Reach had broken the laws of the Guardians of the Universe, and there were clauses in its code of conduct that could allow the AI to intervene directly.
So… the AI intervened.