1000 feet
I woke up to a soft, red glow all around me, and the sound of air rushing past my ears. The glow looked like flames, and the wind was blowing them past but they weren’t touching me. It looked like I was inside a bubble …
800 feet
… and it felt like I was standing inside of a hurricane. Except that my feet weren’t on the ground. I was still drowsy, so it felt surreal. Where was I? Why couldn’t I remember how I’d gotten here?
600 feet
What’d happened to my arms? I looked down at them, dimly lit by the fire in front of me. They were bare and covered in fur. That didn’t seem right at all.
400 feet
If my arms were covered in fur, I thought, then why weren’t they burning? Why wasn’t I burning? Where were the flames even coming from?
200 feet
And what was that thing coming at me? It looked like an enormous black wall, its surface rippling like … water …
20 feet
OH CR-
* * *
Ugh.
My whole body felt heavy, like I’d just been dragged out of a swimming pool. I was sprawled out on top of something hard and damp, unable to get up, barely able to think. Water crawled past my feet up to my chest, and back again. It was warm.
Okay, I thought, so I washed up on shore somewhere. There were about a million things that could’ve gone wrong with this. I could be on a deserted island someplace; I could have some huge gash or internal injury, that I wouldn’t even know about until I tried to move. Then I wouldn’t just be tired and limp, I’d be tired and limp and bleeding to death.
The thought made me scared enough to try moving to check, but I managed to lift my face about an inch from the sand before flopping back down and wincing. Wet sand shifted and ground beneath me, and there was something on top of my face, like a washcloth covering my eyes. I could hear waves and seabirds, but I couldn’t see anything even when I opened my eyes, and I smelled something salty and briny.
I lay there just breathing for a long moment. Then I made myself flop my arm up, from down at my side to over my shoulder, all in one motion. I could feel my hand hit the hard sand, but the pain barely registered. Slowly, I reached up with my fingers without moving my arm, and peeled wet, sickly orange seaweed off of my face.
I tried to toss it aside with a flick of my limp hand but just ended up dragging it farther over me. At least it wasn’t covering my eyes, though, and the sun seemed to be behind me. I could see down the beach; there were tree-lined cliffs not far away, and what looked like a lighthouse past them.
You’d think I would’ve been happy to see a sign that I wasn’t alone here. But the lighthouse wasn’t what caught my eye. Instead, I was staring at my arm. It was covered in black fur, just like when I was falling. And it was matted, salty, and wet, but it was still fur.
There was something in front of my vision; a muzzle, with a tiny black nose. I groanedand closed my eyes again. I wondered if I should feel hurt or betrayed … or giddy. But all I could feel was shock, and my heart beating fast against the sand.
I wasn’t stupid; I knew what had happened to me. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how my transformation had happened. I couldn’t even remember if this kind of thing was unheard of, or if there were other people like this. I couldn’t remember my name. But it wasn’t like total amnesia; it was like trying to recall how to say “Hello” in some language you’d barely heard of. There were hints of it there; I could taste them. But my brain had somehow misfiled it. I couldn’t clearly remember anything … anything, that is, except falling.
Those had been re-entry flames around me. How the heck had I survived that?
Minutes passed. I focused on the soothing water behind me, still lapping at my legs, and I felt my heart rate go down. But the briny, seaweed smell was starting to get to me, and it was hard to breathe while laying on my chest. Worse, my back was getting warm from where the sun was shining on it.
I didn’t want to move. I knew I could make myself, but I didn’t want to. I just wanted the uncomfortable things to go away, so I could go back to sleep. But I knew that that wasn’t going to happen, so I groaned and tried to get up.
My arm lifted for a second, before flopping back down to the sand beside me.
Okay, I thought, let’s try that again. I got my other arm into position, then I tried to push off of the sand to sit up, grunting with the exertion. It worked, and the seaweed slid off down my back. Then I looked down at myself, just to get an idea of what’d happened to me.
Fur covered my whole body; which was good, because I wasn’t wearing any clothes besides my gloves and my shoes. It was a glossy, unnatural shade of black, with tufts of white on my flat, male chest. Neon teal accents rimmed my arms and legs.
Those do not look like natural colors, I thought. What am I?
I felt something thick and bushy on the back of my head as I turned it to look around at myself. Not hair; more substantial than that. I reached behind me to feel what it was, and my hand came back with stiff quills. Was I a porcupine? Maybe a hedgehog; the quills weren’t that pointy.
Then I looked up. There were people, a ways down the beach. Lots of them. Humans.
For a second, my heart leaped. There were people here! I could get help! I could remember I’d used to be human, too; that had to count for something, right? But then I remembered something else … a feeling of suspicion, of distrust. Like a hurt, upset animal would have. I remembered not liking humans. How could I not like them if I’d used to be one? Was it even safe to approach them?
It’d better be, I thought. My energy was starting to come back, and I felt more clear-headed now that I was sitting upright. But I still felt tired and thirsty, and my fur was too thick for this weather. I realized that I was panting, even though my tongue was dry; I was probably dehydrated.
Slowly, I made myself stand up, then started out down the beach; limping at first, as pins and needles left my feet, then at a steady pace. I tried to think through the haze, to figure out what I should do when I got up to them … who I should talk to, what I should say. Unwritten rules came back to me: Don’t ask random strangers for help. Don’t talk to them, don’t look at them, don’t bother them with your presence. Especially since you’re not normal. It’s your fault that you’re not normal. You’re being weird just to offend.
Wow. No wonder I didn’t like humans.
Sure enough, no one offered to help me, even as I limped right past them. Instead I got lifted sunglasses and bewildered stares, from people laying on their towels. Parents called their kids to come away from me, and the kids stared, too, once they saw me.
This is ridiculous, I thought, my face turning red beneath my fur. I wanted to just ask one of them if I could have something to drink, or if they’d seen me fall from the sky or wash up on the beach or knew what had happened to me. But what I guessed had to be a lifetime of conditioning prevented me, and made me feel their stares on my back.
I wanted to just grab someone and start asking questions. Somehow, I wasn’t afraid of doing so … they didn’t seem like a threat. I just felt like it wouldn’t be worth it. As long as there were humans around, I thought, there’d be humans in charge that I could talk to. Humans in uniforms, or sitting behind counters. Those were okay to demand things from, I remembered. Even unreasonable things.
There were shacks set up, farther down the beach. Their signs advertised hot dogs, ice cream and sno-cones. And once I got in line, the family in front of me quickly got out. It made my face burn again, but I was okay with that, I thought, as I strode to the head of the line. At least now I could get some ans-
* * *
“Justin!”
That was my name! And I was a human, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. The otter who was calling it was being pulled away towards a cage, his arms and legs bound to his sides, tail limply brushing the black metal beneath. But what was doing it? I couldn’t see anything!
I ran to him, my footsteps clanking on metal deck plates, and tried to free his arms from whatever was holding him. I felt something around him, like invisible claws wrapped tight around his fuzzy chest and his arms, and I tried to pry them away but they wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t even get a firm grip on them; they felt like fast-rushing air, and they were slippery like ice.
I dug in my feet and strained, trying to pull him away, my face turned towards the stars past the consoles. Then I saw him: a bird of prey, with grey and white feathers and a black “mask” of feathers around his sharp beak. One of his taloned hands was clutching a deep blue jewel on a chain around his neck, and the other was stretched out towards – what was my otter friend’s name again? – and gripping the air in its claws.
I could put two and two together. I ran at the falcon, head down, getting ready to tackle him-
WHAM. Something hit my side while I was running at him. I was sent sprawling on the floor, hands and feet twitching, smoke coming out of my charred clothing.
“Can’t let you do that, human.”
Smugness dripped from the silky male voice. I wanted to look, to see who it was, but I was paralyzed; my limbs and my head just weren’t working. Besides that, I thought I remembered. It was right there just past-
Cage bars slammed into place, outside my field of vision. All I could see were the windows, and the blue arc of the world beneath us. The falcon relaxed his grip, and turned to look as a black cat stepped into view … the one who had just shot me.
Something was wrong about him. Something was crawling across his sleek fur, something black and oily and alive. It turned into a belt and a holster, as soon as he put his gun by his waist. I remembered that wasn’t the real threat, though. It was something I couldn’t see right now, something-
The room began to glow green, from somewhere past where I could turn my head. “Oh hey,” the cat said, turning to look. “What do you know! Brighter than ever, this time. The God of Destruction must like it when we destroy things.” He grinned.
The falcon coughed, one fist to his beak. “The human is still alive, sir.”
It was true … I was struggling to my feet, shaking my head to clear it. Ignoring the ringing in my ears, and the stinging pain in my side. The cat just gave me an amused look. “Chaos must favor this one!” he remarked, to the falcon. “Or else you are more than you appear,” he told me. “Some kind of Adept? A wild Talent?”
I looked to see where the glow was coming from. There was a dark, green gem, the size of a grapefruit, set into a console in front of the wall. And the ringing in my ears got louder as I squinted into its bright glow.
“You could always just shoot him again, sir … ”
“Quiet, Tachyon.” The cat waved one hand to hush his pet (how did I know that?). Then he looked at me. “Well?” the cat asked. “Chaos has given you another chance. What are you going to do with it?”
I looked between him and my friend, inside the cage. His eyes were wide and staring at me. Then my eyes fixed on the gem again, now glowing brighter. It seemed familiar somehow … I remembered my friend finding it, showing it to me, wondering what he should do with it. Being kidnapped because of it. But the familiarity was more than that; it was more like seeing your favorite old keyboard, or game controller, after digging it up in the attic. Remembering it, and realizing what it was for.
I began to stagger towards it.
“Ooh! Going for the prize, are we?”
“Sir … ”
“Hush!”
I was still staggering toward it, wishing that I could move faster. Then I stepped over a circle design on the floor, and a glass tube shot out from it all around me, going right up to the ceiling. The cat had his hand on a button, on one of the consoles, and the falcon had clasped his hands behind his back and was looking away.
“Chaos seemed to like it when you got shot,” the cat said, his voice muffled and echoey. “Let’s see how he likes this!”
My friend screamed, as I got shot out into space.
Everything was quiet for a moment. I floated there inside the tube, my hair and clothes drifting, no longer held down. I could see the huge planet below me, blue and white, and could see the tiny space station we’d left, tethered down to the world by a thread.
Then I saw something glow, on its surface. And a second later everything was fire and noise.
* * *
“Can I help you?” the otter girl asked, from behind the counter. She was wearing an apron and cap.
I blinked, uncomprehending. Then something caught my eye, from below. A tablet, still turned on, that someone had left on their towel. Its screen was in the shadow of a nearby umbrella, and it was open to a news website, with a familiar picture on the front page.
“Sir?”
I picked up the tablet and looked at the picture, holding it beneath the umbrella. It was a grainy, satellite photo of the space station I had just left, and the explosion that I remembered. The headline read “Hostage Meets Tragic End.”
“Sir … ”
I caught a glimpse of my name, there in the first sentence. It was still bright out, so it was hard to read … and the shock I was now feeling was making it surreal. But even though I was distracted, my eyes scanned over the article looking for clues. Cultists … Tether Station … God of Destruction … Chaos.
“Hostage Meets Tragic End.”
The shock was beginning to crystallize, as I looked down at my arms holding the tablet. I could remember who I’d been, but it seemed so far away now. What’d happened? Why did I look like this? How the heck had I survived?
Somehow, I wasn’t sure it was important. It felt like I had died up there. Or the person I’d been had died, anyway. All that mattered was saving my friend, and beating the daylights out of that stupid cat. All that mattered was getting back to that station.
The otter behind the counter had gone back to cleaning it off. I held up the tablet to her, and pointed at the picture on it. “Tell me how to get here,” I said. My human life seemed like a blur, and I couldn’t remember things like that.
“Tether Station? Um … ” Her eyes flicked out to the horizon, and I looked behind myself out where she was looking. There was an island, out there in the bay. And a thin, black line, stretching up from it into the sky.
“Thank you,” I told her, remembering my manners. I set the tablet back down on the towel, before another phrase came back to me. “Do you have free ice water?”
* * *
For some reason, my instinct was still to try things the human way first. That’s why I spent the next hour or so trudging through grassy sand, heading towards the dock for the ferry that went to the island.
Of course, it was closed. It would be closed, given what was happening up there.
The boat sat there moored in the water, past a shack and the vacant parking lot. “It looks kinda low-scale and tourist-y,” my human memories told me. “The people who can actually afford a ticket to the Station probably get to the island by air.”
Well, that wasn’t an option, seeing as how I couldn’t fly. For a moment I thought of commandeering the boat, but my human memories protested that I wouldn’t know how to operate it. So that ruled that out, too.
I stood there at the top of the hill overlooking the parking lot, my arms folded, looking out at the island. The sun was behind clouds now and the wind was starting to pick up, and the breeze fluffed out my quills. It was refreshing, and I closed my eyes and enjoyed it for a few seconds. I was still hungry, but I was more impatient. Somehow, I needed to get out there.
Seagulls called overhead as I hopped the barrier across the road and walked down to the parking lot. Then I sat down on one of those concrete speed bumps at the end of each parking space, took off my shoes and emptied them of sand. As I did so, something clicked, and I knew how I was going to get across. And for a moment it was surprising, but then I realized it shouldn’t be.
Looking back on it, I’m surprised I didn’t have an existential crisis right there. What did this all mean? What had I become? Was I myself anymore? As it turned out, I had been all along, not that I knew that at the time. I just wasn’t concerned with thinking about things like that. All that I was concerned with was getting up to that station and saving my friend. I could worry about the hard questions later. For now, if my instincts helped me get up there, I would act on them.
I put my shoes back on and walked back up to the gatehouse, then turned around and fixed my eyes on the island out in the distance. I leaned over and assumed a runner’s crouch, my mind clear of distractions, my eyes still locked on the island. Then I started counting in my head.
3 …
2 …
1 …
Go.
I took off.
It felt like riding a bicycle downhill. In seconds I’d cleared the parking lot, and was out on a sandbar running past the boat. I was going fast and my feet were pumping like mad, but it felt like they weighed nothing. There was no effort involved.
I pushed myself, as my feet touched wet sand. Wind screamed past my ears and flattened my quills to my forehead, and it began to feel like a physical barrier that I needed to push past. So I did, putting on a sudden burst of energy right as I cleared the shoreline. I shot out over the water like a rocket, a comet-like field of energy flowing around my front half like a bubble and trailing behind me in streaks. The air around me felt calm, and the water felt like it was solid, even though I was barely touching it.
I put on another burst of speed, suddenly afraid of the water, not wanting to slow down and drown. When I got within sight of the island’s shoreline, I could see it was much bigger than it’d looked … there were boats, landed airplanes, a whole slew of buildings. And there were army vehicles parked just past the beach. Would I have to fight my way past them to get up there?
Not if they can’t catch me, I thought.
The lines and dots on the beach resolved into fences, vans with antennae on top, and camouflage-colored vehicles. I jumped as soon as my feet touched the sand and then I somersaulted in midair, clearing the barbed-wire fence and landing back in a run without breaking my stride. A person carrying a microphone and talking into a camera had her hair blown back as I ran past, ignoring them and the soldiers in uniform and making my way towards the tether.
Alarm sirens sounded as I ran in a spiral, up the road that led to the tether. A truck was blocking my way, right up next to the gate, so I sidestepped around it and ducked under the road barrier. Then I ran towards the base of the tether: a big, square platform, indented into the ground and made of black metal. It reminded me of subway tracks. Something that traveled the tether was meant to land here, I thought. Something big. And it wasn’t parked here, so that meant it was still up there. Because I took it up there, I thought.
The sirens kept wailing as I stopped at the edge of the platform, looking down at the bowl-like indentation inside it and at the exposed machinery. Then I looked up at the tether itself. It was less than an inch thick, and made of black cable. How was I supposed to get up that? Would I even be able to survive if I could? That shield I’d created had seemed to trap air around me … would it block out cosmic rays, and scorching temperatures?
Somehow, I still wasn’t worried. I was still just acting on instinct. People were shouting at me from behind, and I heard weapons being cocked and machines being moved into position, but none of it bothered me as much as the fact that my friend was still in trouble.
I remembered reading about how the tether tram used magnetic levitation, like trains. Somehow, that was all that my instincts needed. I jumped down into the “bowl” inside the platform and curled into a ball as I did so, rolling inside it and starting to pick up speed. My fur and my quills stood on end, and the air around my ears crackled, as something inside me reacted with what I was rolling on.
I kept going around in circles, faster and faster, propelled by the reaction. And the crackling became more intense until I broke through just like I had while running, and could feel myself surrounded by the comet trail again. I couldn’t see or hear anything outside of the ball I was rolled in, but just felt the rush of speed and energy, and the circular track I was rolling in.
I leaned myself towards the inside of the track, towards the tether itself. Then gravity shifted, and all of a sudden I was flying upwards, not even touching the tether but somehow guided along it … rolling around it in circles, as I continued to shoot upwards.
I did not dare open my eyes. I didn’t do anything except try to force myself to keep making that field around me, and it didn’t help that I didn’t know how. All I know is that as I kept going the light around me got brighter and brighter, and I could feel burning warmth on one side of me and freezing cold on the other. The only thing that kept me from dying to either was the fact that I was still spinning around so fast. It felt like a carnival ride, and I was pretty sure I was going to throw up afterwards.
I don’t know how long it lasted. I just remember long minutes of silence.
Eventually I thought “What am I going to do when I reach the end?” Then I reached it, as the tether drifted away behind me and I reflexively uncurled. To one side of me was a bright, white and blue wall, three-dimensional wisps of cloud casting shadows on the world beneath. To the other side was the Milky Way, every last star visible.
There was no station in sight. And the shield still around me was dim, and starting to flicker.
Now, you know I survived, or I wouldn’t be telling you this. And frankly, after seeing what’s already happened, I doubt if you’d be surprised anyway.
At the time, though, I was freaked out. My backside was numbing with frostbite, while my face – and the hand I was shielding my eyes with – felt like it was next to the oven, with the door left hanging open. I had only seconds to figure out what to do, but I couldn’t think of anything. I was really scared for my life.
But on another level, I was annoyed. I didn’t feel like I’d just been spaced, I felt like I had been cut off in traffic. Or scratched by an annoying black cat. It was running off with something important to me, and I wanted it back.
I could feel the emerald out there. And as the station crossed between me and the sun, I looked up at its silhouette, and … it’s like I grabbed onto the emerald, somehow, and started pulling myself towards it.
“Um, sir?” It was that bird’s voice! Tachyon’s. It sounded tinny and metallic. Was I hearing what was inside the room where the emerald was?
“One step ahead of you,” the cat said.
I saw bright flashes on the underside of the station. Then there was fire and noise again, deep rumblings as my shield shook. Sparks filled my vision as I was sent tumbling.
I didn’t care. I made the gem inside the station “down” and fell towards it again, face-first, my shield glowing like a comet’s trail. Sparks flew off of it, and I could feel myself being deflected by whatever that thing was shooting at me. But as it floated past the sun, and everything “beneath” me turned into a blaze of light, I just made myself keep falling towards it. Pulled to it by the emerald.
The sun was blocked out by black metal, a solid shape in the light. It got bigger and bigger, until finally-
SLAM
I bounced off of it. Well, not exactly bounced … I smashed through it like a bullet. And I got a brief glimpse of lights and deck plates before I was shot back out the way I’d came, the explosive decompression sucking me out into the vacuum.
“Okay,” I thought, in between being shot out and being pulled back by the emerald. “This is a little silly.”
Some kind of blast doors were closing across the hole that I’d made. I flattened myself horizontally, and “fell” inside just as they shut, tumbling sideways across the deck as the station’s gravity pulled me that way. Then there was a sound like a dozen blow-dryers, and my fur and quills were fluffed out by air jets before I heard a robotic male voice: “Hull breach in sector 208 sealed. Sector 208 repressurized. Intruder in sector 208.”
I could hear the voices in the room with the emerald talking again, but somehow it seemed noisier inside the station. I couldn’t make them out. “Oh well,” I thought, as I stood back on my feet and my shield flickered out. “I know what direction the emerald is in … and that’s all that I need to know.”
* * *
“Hull breach in sector 114. Hull breach in sector 58. Hull breach in sector 27.”
My spines were like chainsaws. I made myself spin in place somehow, just like I did to get up there, then I shot myself through closed doors and uncurled on the other side. I tried on the walls once or twice, but weird liquids and sparks shot out before I’d even broke through. The doors just folded and clattered in pieces around me.
Everything was black metal and colored lights. Alarm sirens and map displays, in multi-level hallways with windows set into the walls. I couldn’t believe anyone could live someplace like this … even the potted plants were plastic. It was so sterile and fake. Sort of like human social rules.
Another locked door. I smashed through and uncurled to see silver, four-legged robots, stopped in mid-strike, looking at me and shining red lights in my face. A corner of my mind could remember being scared to death by these things; sneaking down hallways behind them, shooting at them just to distract them, bullets clanging off of their armor.
Right now, I just wanted them gone. So I charged through them, into an explosion of noise and gunfire and shearing metal, and sparks flying off of my shield. I came out the other side and looked back at the wreckage, just in time to see one robot collapse.
There was a scythe in my hand, shining metal with a jeweled hilt. It weighed nothing. Where had it come from? I guessed that it must have appeared somehow, when I’d decided to destroy those robots. I tried to tear into the next door with it, but it got stuck there and I struggled with it. So I let go, and it disappeared.
I stopped there for a moment to catch my breath, and I jumped as something sparked. Deep down inside, I was still frightened and numb with shock, like I’d almost drowned. I still remembered running for my life from those things. And from Shadow, and Tachyon, and … and …
I looked down at myself, at my gloved hands and furred arms. What was I doing here? What’d happened to me? I’d-
Another loud spark, and an explosion from inside a dead robot’s chest. I jumped, and shielded my face. Then, after a long second of cringing, I smacked myself to snap myself out of it. “Argh!” I said. “What am I thinking? I can’t afford to have a crisis right now! I need to get upstairs, to that emerald, to my friend … ”
SLAM. “Hull breach in sector 8.”
* * *
I didn’t want to accidentally maim my friend (what was his name, anyway?), so instead of sawing through the door with my spines I took the scythe to it. It took me a second to get it to appear; I had to just want to break down the door, without thinking about how.
I lodged my scythe in the door, then tore it out of the wall and sent it flying down the hallway. On the other side was a startled-looking Tachyon, his feathers ruffled and wingtips clutching the gem around his neck … and past him, a cat giving me an angry glare, next to the cage that my friend was in.
“Tachyon,” Shadow said, “destroy him.”
The falcon looked up at my scythe, then back at Shadow. After that he stepped out of the way. “You first,” he said.
“Fine.” Shadow grabbed up Chaos’ Emerald, from the console it was set into. “I’ll just kill you next.”
He held out the emerald, clawing it in a vicelike grip. And my fur and my quills stood on end, as there was this rush like air across a cave entrance, and everything in the room except him and the glowing gem faded out and became dark. It was surreal, and I think that if he’d done that when I was human I would’ve grovelled for mercy right there.
I could remember being afraid of Shadow. There was part of me that was still scared of him. But even as ominous as he seemed, I didn’t feel like I was heading for certain death, or even a climactic showdown. It felt more like I’d cornered an unruly cat beneath a stairwell. He’d scratched my friend and run off with something of mine, and I wanted it back.
I launched myself across the void at him, and brought my scythe down hard enough to pierce metal. A shield bubble came up around him out of the gem, like mine but emerald green, and it rippled like water but didn’t break. Streamers of energy danced between it and the gem in Shadow’s claws.
I swung my scythe at his shield again and again, and I could see Shadow strain but his shield wasn’t breaking. Then it disappeared and he leaped at me, his claws slashing bright green arcs through the darkness. The trails of light burned into my retinas and nearly blinded me, as I tried to sidestep and parry using my scythe.
Sparks flew, as his claws clashed with my shield and the handle. Then he tore my scythe’s handle in two and brought his claws across my chest, before pouncing me with his back feet and jumping off that way, rolling and coming up in a crouch.
I touched my chest, where his foot-claws had drawn blood, and it stung. My gloves came up stained red.
I looked up at Shadow, and he hissed and held out the gem at me. And it began to draw energy into it, as if focusing for an attack.
“To heck with this,” I thought, and tossed the pieces of my scythe away. I spun in place the way that I’d done to break down the doors, revving and charging and building my shield around me. Then I let myself fly at him, right as he released the energy he’d been building up.
There was a smashing noise, loud as a thunderclap, as I bounced off of him and across the floor and smacked into the wall. When I came up on one elbow the room was normally lighted, and there was a black scorch mark on the floor where we had collided. I had a headache, but Shadow looked even more out of it than I was. He was on his back moaning, his tail twitching, the gem a foot away from his hand.
Tachyon stood right next to me, watching the gem. He looked down at me nervously, and for a second it looked like he was going to go help Shadow. I grunted and got to my feet before he could move, and went over and picked up the emerald in one gloved hand. I tucked it under my elbow before grabbing Shadow by the scruff of his neck, holding him out in front of me and shaking him.
“I don’t remember why this blasted gem is so important. But I remember I used to be human.” Somehow, I couldn’t look at my friend while I said that. “Tell me what’s happened to me!”
“ … hwah?” It looked like he was cross-eyed. He tried to rub his face with both hands, but his movements were slow and sluggish.
“Tell me what’s going on!” I screamed it at him. I hadn’t realized how mad I was, or how scared.
He just giggled, drunkenly, and made a clumsy attempt to reach for the emerald in my other arm. I threw him over the consoles, and he smacked into the floor next to the window. Then I stood there fuming, still unable to face my friend, still unable to so much as remember his name. After a long moment of this I realized I was clutching the gem in both arms and hugging it like a plushie, but I didn’t care.
“He thinks he’s Chaos,” said a quiet voice. I looked over to see Tachyon next to the door, one wingtip pressed to the edge like he was getting ready to leave.
“ … and he isn’t?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.
“Chaos,” Tachyon repeated. “The God of Destruction.” He said it like this was supposed to clear things up.
I gave him a long, annoyed look. He gulped audibly, and tried to explain, looking away and edging closer to the door. “Shadow believes that he’s Chaos reborn. There are legends … and things … ” A sweatdrop had formed on his feathers. “He was trying to fulfill them. He thought he’d assume his true form.”
“What ‘true form?’”
Tachyon brought his eyes up from the floor, and gave me a long, meaningful look. And my face turned red beneath my new fur, as I realized what he meant. I had become this Chaos that they were obsessed with. That Shadow had thought he was.
It felt like I’d just been told I was on a hidden-camera show. Everything I’d done up to that point, everything since I’d fallen from the sky, all of it was living out this cat’s dreams. My friend had been used, I had been killed, and the only reason they were taking me seriously now was because I wasn’t me anymore. I was …
But wait. Hadn’t he said ‘true form’? Then that would explain why everything came so naturally … and why my memories were so hazy. It wasn’t like normal amnesia, it was more like I’d just woken up from a dream. And the dream world was starting to fade, as I remembered the waking world.
In that case, this was what I’d always been, before I’d fallen asleep somehow. And these jerks had some kind of whole stupid belief system where I was an icon to them. Because I couldn’t care less if that cat didn’t get to live out his precious power fantasies, and pretend to be me – or try to become me – and hurt people like my friend. I just wanted to get him out of there, and wait for my head to clear and my memories to return before I decided what to do next.
God of Destruction? If I met any more people like that cat, I’d show them a God of Destruction.
I gave the falcon a cold glare, and he cringed, literally hugging the edge of the doorway and trying to shield himself from me.
“Tell me the quickest way off of this station,” I told him.
“C-” He coughed. “Chaos’ Control?”
“Which is?”
He cringed even further, as though unable to speak. But his eyes locked on the emerald, and memories of how to use it came back to me. “Okay,” I said. “Get out of here.”
He stumbled around the corner and fled, claws clicking. Then I turned around, and looked down at the cage that my friend the otter was crouched in. “Hey,” I said.
“ … Justin?” His eyes were wide.
“Kinda.” I made the scythe appear again, and he jumped back. But I just used it to cut off the padlock, then tossed it away and pulled open the door before helping my friend out. He was a little taller than I was, and his fur was ragged and unwashed. I hugged him anyway, and while I could feel his heart racing it seemed to have settled down a bit by the time that I let go.
“W-what happened to you?” he asked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Now, hold still. We’re getting out of here.”
I held the gem up in one hand, and took his hand in the other. The cat started moaning again, and I turned to glare at him for a second before closing my eyes …
… and vanishing.