Nothing could have prepared anyone for how utterly off of the expected course a second life could be.
The matter, energy, and DNA absorption powers of an Osmosian. A couple of unexpected allies. An intergalactic shadow war between light and darkness.
With forces gathering, plots thickening, and threats emerging, one man will attempt to thwart the chaotic and crushing grip of fate across the universe.
I'll be taking this one in a different direction than before from the very beginning, as you'll see soon. I don't plan on often retreading much ground from the previous story. You may see some elements that pop up, but this is ultimately its own beast.
I have a few chapters pre-written so that I can keep up a relatively consistent posting pattern for the foreseeable future.
OSMOS V
June 1, 16:14 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWELVE
I was three years old - again - when my second life decided to veer off of the expected course. I might never get used to the idea of a second life at all, but I am living it all the same.
There were clues, certainly, that things were headed in a weird direction. Yet, the limitations of a toddler's development kept me from fully realizing the gravity of the situation, the strangeness of this new life. Somewhere in the haze of a baby's neural networks lie memories of a history teacher in his late twenties who longed for more than a meager existence in the throes of late-stage capitalism. Nothing in those old, fading memories could have prepared me for the first time my grandfather visited and unraveled everything I thought I knew.
I stared, slack-jawed, as a figure I only knew from Mother's stories stepped into the family living room. He shifted on one leg as he removed his wet boots by the door. The dented cleaning robot shifted into position to dry up the mess, bumping into Grandfather's knee. The man's face brightened when he finally spotted me on the other side of the oval sofa, a redness in his cheeks reaching to his horns.
Horns.
Horns.
I rubbed at my forehead with tiny fingers, as confusion only grew. I rubbed my eyes next, wondering if I was just seeing things.
Nope - all four of them are still there.
"Hello, little one." The man crossed the distance and leaned down on one knee to come closer to my height. "You must be Cassian."
I nodded. Any discomfort from the use of a name that was not my own paled in comparison to learning that my grandfather had horns tucked beneath short, silver hair. I failed to rationalize it - they were too perfectly symmetrical to be a freak birth defect. What was this…?
"Hi," I said nervously, speaking not in English but in whatever language took over Earth in this future time. Perhaps these horns were a futuristic surgical body mod? "You have horns?"
He smiled slightly. "Oh these? You'll get them eventually."
I'll… get them?
"I don't understand."
"You will one day - it's a natural part of who you are, Cassian."
A natural part…?
Before I could clarify, his attention turned to Mother, who exited her room to greet him with a worried expression written across her face. Faded laugh lines hid how she really felt, and her perfume was different again for the third time this week. "Have you any news?"
The man with inexplicable horns returned his daughter-in-law's expression. It was not lost on me that this was my first time meeting my grandfather, and Mother had not commented on the occasion the moment she saw us together.
Whatever news she expected must be big.
"There was no landing," Grandfather said simply, a grave expression written on his face. "Zenoan drones sent over the expected site found nothing of note."
Mother arched a brow of her hornless forehead. Was she supposed to have them? Was I? What did he mean?
"Did they check the calculations?"
"Mother, why does Grandfather have those things on his head?"
She glanced down at me and then back to her father-in-law, face awash with worry. "Son, the adults are talking."
My knuckles tightened, and my jaw clenched tightly enough to nearly draw blood.
Grandfather ushered her into the one room in which I could not go and had not gone - Father's office. A metallic door whirred to life at their approach, as though it knew they were allowed, and I was not. Cool air from the only air conditioned room in the house spilled blissfully into the living room. "Yes, I'm told they triple and quadruple checked, and accounted for any reasonable margin of error. Clan Zenoan does not do half-measur-."
The door closed behind them, cutting me off from Mother's swift reply.
I scurried over to follow them and to continue listening, eager to hear about news from the outside world. Mother and Father almost never talked about anything important around me, and I barely knew that we lived in the outskirts of a city I'd never heard of in my past life, speaking a language I did not recognize. If not for neural plasticity, I'd have continued to confuse them with English words they took as baby talk. I held precious the few bits of knowledge I did know, things they did not hide from me.
I craved an adult conversation. I'd even take a contentious political or religious debate at this point over Father trying to teach me to count, or Mother reading bedtime stories about fanciful morality tales. None of them were even the familiar ones I remembered, so it was difficult to feel invested at all.
The door to the office did not open at my urging or my presence and remained closed, locked and unresponsive. Frustration grew yet again, and I kicked at the floor just to let the feelings go somewhere.
The cleaning robot rolled onto the space where I kicked and began scuffing out any potential damage, however minor, to the floor. The buggy thing cared little for my personal space, almost rolling over my outstretched toes.
I sighed and patted the thing on the head like a pet. "You'd understand, wouldn't you, if you were in my shoes? Not able to ask proper questions without the people you love looking at you like a freak?"
The robot did not respond. It couldn't - I'd heard of robots who could speak on the broadcasts, but this was barely more complex than a Roomba. Telling it my woes in private, away from my parents, was a frequent way to spend my evenings, even if it could not listen or engage. It was just responsive enough sometimes that I could convince myself it cared.
I did love them. Second set of parents or not, I had never been the kind of person who rejected connections. Even in my first life, my best friends' parents were almost like a second set for me. When you spend the first few months of renewed life nursing, it was difficult to not feel connected to Mother, even if most of that time was a hazy-mess in my memory.
I was grateful for it - I had no desire to unpack that.
I did have a desire to figure out how this door worked.
OSMOS V
June 1, 21:23 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWELVE
"Cassian."
Mother's voice interrupted my almost sleepy state. I'd almost fallen asleep despite worrying over horns and Zenoan drones and confusing reincarnations into a future era of Earth.
She crept into my bedroom and stopped near the edge of the harsh bed. She tucked a stray strand of her ginger hair away and cleared her throat. "Cassian, how are yo-"
"Why does Grandfather have horns?"
She blinked at the question. "Everyone grows horns eventually - it's part of maturing, Cassian. You won't have to worry about it for a long time."
Not to worry about it? If that was something natural, then… that meant my humanity was in question! If I was not human, and this second family was not human, then what did all of it mean? Was there a transhuman movement in the past?
Nothing added up, and one question came to mind. "Where are yours and Father's?"
Mother touched a spot on her forehead. "I still have nearly thirty years before they begin to grow. Your father has probably twenty." She repeated the numbers again in a sing-song voice, and I had to remind myself to look like a stupid toddler learning math for the first time.
"An old age thing?"
How had humans changed this much?
"Oh, no!" She chuckled. "I am nowhere near old. My grandfather is old - nearly four hundred and ten. That is old."
…!
I had so many questions.
"Listen, Cassian, your grandfather wanted to visit with you today. Some work came back up in the capital with your aunt, and he left via transport ship this morning shortly after he arrived here," she began, a solemn look in her eyes, but I cut her off. "I know that it is all sudden, but can you-"
"Okay, that's fine - but Great Grandfather is four hundred and ten? Is that a long time?"
She grinned. "He'd disagree with you, I'm sure - he's always been stubborn about all that. When I was young, I knew an Elder who lived to be six hundred and eighty-two, so old depends on who you ask."
I nodded, not fully taking in anything she said. Horns… living for centuries…
More so than before, I needed to learn to read the language they used to speak, that I learned as my mother tongue in this body. I wanted to ask her if they have any datapads in English, but they were remarkable unhelpful about that. There were limits to what you could ask without your parents thinking you needed a psychiatric evaluation.
"Does that mean you'll teach me to read instead?"
Mother gently smiled. "You meant that?"
I fervently agreed. Grandfather had been a teacher once, a professor later in life - so had I, once. If anyone could teach me to read before any formal schooling, it would be him. That was something I'd asked Father a week ago when Grandfather told us he was coming for an extended stay.
"If you're serious," she began, her eyes steady and warm, "then we can get started soon. It won't be easy, and you'll have to work hard, Cassian."
I was reading chapter books well before any of my peers in school in my first life - if anyone can learn to read earlier than most children, it would be someone with the memories of an adult brain. Surely that would help.
"I'm sorry your Grandfather had to leave on business with your aunt," Mother finally said, pulling me from my thoughts. "He was looking forward to spending time with you, but so am I and your father. We'll get you reading, Cassian, in no time."
The idea of unencumbered learning made me salivate. I would read every piece of text I could get my hands on until I learn exactly what was going on, with Grandfather and horns and long lives and Zenoan drones and whatever else was damn curious about this place. Either medical technology had progressed far, far beyond its rational limits, or… I was not human at all. If the latter was true, then asking either of my parents was no simple task.
No - I'd have to figure this out myself.
MUMBAI
June 2, 3:23 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWELVE
A young girl stepped into the city street, bundled in nearly every piece of clothing she owned. The sweltering heat - even in the middle of the night - made this a miserable choice, but she'd seen how others look at her. She could not make a different choice, or she... she would suffer.
Covering all but her eyes and the soles of her feet, she felt her way through dingy streets and back-alley crossings, sticking to the shadows as much as she dared. The dark was scary and full of nightmares, but the streetlights brought attention and focus toward her.
She did not want either of those things.
What she wanted was something to fill the empty pit in her stomach, to fill out her scrawny arms, to give her energy back. She had next to none, and every day, it got worse.
As she lifted a heavy dumpster lid with all her might, it suddenly snapped shut as the weight was too much for her tiny body. The sound echoed throughout the alleyway, and she couldn't avoid remembering the screaming, the shouting. Loud sounds of rage and of fear could not escape her mind for a moment, and she tumbled off the side of the container and collapsed onto grimy asphalt.
The creak of a metallic door opening nearby forced her to try to climb to her feet, but she stumbled over her own weight and fell face-first into a leftover puddle. Before she could react, a voice slurred, "Hello? Whooo's there...?"
A brown man in glasses and a thick beard approached her carefully, stopping when she tensed. Loud music from inside the club behind him died out when the door finally closed again.
"Are you there or have I-" he burped- "finally proved my mātā right and drunk too much?" Groaning, he waited expectantly for her to do something.
What, she didn't know.
The girl had two choices, she figured: ignore him and run or stay and beg. She hesitated long enough for the man to brace himself against the wheelchair ramp railing.
"You're short- no, you're a kiiiid," he muttered as his senses slowly tried to return to him. He blinked behind his glasses. "Why are y-you out here?"
She considered running or talking, and then immediately tensed. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes as she realized her hesitation would get her killed one day.
"You don't have to be scared," he said calmly, taking a step closer. "I'm a friend. My name is Abhi. What's yours?"
She felt frozen, unable to push herself to her feet. Her hands tingled against the earth.
"How old are you?" he asked. When she didn't tell him she was barely four years old, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. The motion spread a shiver across her palms. "You really should not be out here, kid, especially not at this time of night."
He glanced over his shoulder toward the door for the club, phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. Hands pull at the door to open it again behind him, drowning the silence of the alleyway in dance music again. "Don't go anywhere, kid. You-"
Not even a moment later, two women barge through the exit, laughing in their bright colored clothing and not having a care in the world about showing off beautiful skin. She didn't know why she did not like them, but it takes them all of ten seconds to realize that she is there.
"Hello, little one," one said, a soft smile across her face. "Abhi, you didn't mention this."
"It just happened," he countered, "and you didn't answer your phone."
The other woman scoffed. "Who cares about that? We gotta figure out what to do with the kid. He could be hurt or something."
He? She frowned again, annoyed that they could not see her through the mud, through the clothes, through the cloth coverings. "I'm a girl!"
"She speaks!" Abhi called, speech still slurred. "The three of us were here together tonight, and we're going to work together to get you home."
She wanted to answer, but every time she had talked lately, it just made things worse. The other orphans hated her guts after what happened, and any one who's tried to help just ended up dead.
"You hungry?" the first woman asked carefully. The girl could not stop herself from nodding. "Okay, good. My name is Fatima, and this is Thya. We were going to go to a midnight snack joint just down the street. You want to come with?"
"We'll get some food in you," Thya added. "You have anything you want to tell us?"
Slowly, she followed and ignored Thya's question, allowing her stomach to guide her along. She kept an appreciable distance between herself and the three adults, and the earth tingled beneath her feet.
"This is crazy," Abhi said too loudly, before their conversation devolves into a whisper she was too far away to hear. The women said something in argument with each other and with him, and the girl was not liking her chances of making it through this dinner in one piece.
The small midnight diner reminded her of a place her father once took her, before he got sick three years ago. Not the same place, but the smell of breakfast food wafted into the area outside the restaurant, serving to only make her sicker.
When they opened the door to escort her inside, she almost turned around and hightailed it out of there. Instead, she let her stomach pull her through the doorway.
"Why's she covering all of herself?"
"Maybe it's a religion thing."
"That's not a burqa-"
"She's like three years old or something," Thya finished as they took their seats, allowing the girl to sit on the side facing the aisle. "Too young to be worried about all that."
Fatima met the girl's gaze, running her finger through her shortened brunette hair. "Listen, you can't keep wearing those clothes forever. They reek, it's not lady-like, and - well, let's just see!" The woman reached a hand across the table suddenly and yanked down part of the hood covering the back of her head, revealing the girl's pink hair to the few people in the diner during the middle of the night.
"Ooh, pretty!"
Untapped power surged from the girl for a single instant. The table between them shook for half a second, knocking Fatima's water onto her lap.
"Damn it," she cursed, trying to use a paper towel to address it. "Did one of you shake the tab-"
"Uh, guys - check this out!"
Abhi cared little for the gushing over the girl's unnatural hair color dye job nor for the arguing over the spilled drink. He pointed to one of the televisions showing a live-feed of something happening on nearly the other side of the world through GBS. A helicopter crew caught footage of a spandex-covered man with a red cape stopping a rampaging semi truck from crashing into a freeway full of crossing pedestrians and smaller vehicles using one hand.
"Is he flying?"
"How's he picking up that tractor trailer like it's nothing?"
"Did he just laser weld using his damn eyes?"
The girl stared up at the feed with interest. She couldn't read the captions, but she could hear fairly well if people were quiet. In English, she thinks, the words, "The Superman" rolled across the screen.
Strong, flying, heat vision, durability... where was he when she needed him last week? Or the week before? She doubted very much that he just appeared out of nowhere. If he had all that power, he could have done something for her, to help her, to not have her endure all of this.
He could have removed the heads of her first set of foster parents a year ago so that she didn't have to.
Fun fact: June 1st, 1998 (Team Year Negative Twelve) is the date of Superman's public debut in Young Justice. Batman would debut around a year later.
I wonder if any of the lesser used Osmosian powers will show up?
these ones could be useful for repairs and construction?
the fluidity of the last one implies that they can control it a bit more, maybe like a Avatar Bender or FMAB alchemist?
I wonder if any of the lesser used Osmosian powers will show up?
these ones could be useful for repairs and construction?
the fluidity of the last one implies that they can control it a bit more, maybe like a Avatar Bender or FMAB alchemist?
OSMOS V
September 14, 1:09 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE ELEVEN
I was four years old - again - when my second life decided to veer far off of the expected course.
I stared blankly at the datapad, a handheld metallic screen not unlike a smart tablet. Scrounged from some of Father's things, I frequently sat in bed each night and tried to learn what I can. The data network it accessed was nothing like the modern-day Internet, and learning to navigate that while held back linguistically was incredibly difficult. Written in a language called Osmotin with letters that were less like letters and more like Chinese characters, there was much I could not read adequately, and finding a search engine function was incredibly difficult.
Google was not eternal, apparently, and typing in the rough translation of that word revealed nothing. Perhaps my translation was wrong, though - learning Osmotin was the hardest thing I'd ever done, academically, but I had plenty of time on my hands to do it because no toddler had a busy schedule. I'd come a long way, but there was long to go. I could have gotten farther if Mother could devote more time to me, but I understood that she could not.
I scrambled my way through site after site, annoyed that this was organized very much like a wiki crawl. It was like the Internet had restarted at Web 2.0 and had not progressed further, or perhaps had regressed to that stage, in all this time. Regardless of the truth, each night, I felt like I got closer and closer to something resembling what I am looking for, until finally, I found something to confirm exactly what I suspected.
A news article or bulletin with a headline that loosely translated as follows: "Period of Something? Ahead - Expect Falling Sky Objects." Sponsored by a writer for Clan Herod, a name I'd overheard frequently enough to believe that it was someone important in the capital.
Wherever that was. It was not Washington D.C. or London or Moscow or Beijing.
I read through the next few lines of the article, the verbiage hard to parse as this was not written for someone like me. That one word in the headline had no easy translation, or was one that I had not encountered before. A name? The article itself provided little more context. Something about a year ago, something about rocks, something about the last time this happened twenty years back. Something close to Osmotin - Osmos?
A hand reached for the datapad and gently yanked it from my fighting grasp. Father stood at the foot of the bed, a magnifying monocle lens covering one eye while he smelled vaguely of the butchery he called work. An admonishing frown crossed his face, brow raised in challenge.
Frustration built in the pit of my stomach, and I had to actively push down the will to fight.
"I didn't, uh, hear you come in."
He adjusted the light fixture to the side of my bed and pulled the cord, revealing the rest of the room. The window looking out into the small yard shone with our reflections against the darkened desert sands. His look did not improve as the seconds passed, and the click of the datapad screen going dark echoed in the silence. Fingers reached up to grasp the monocle and to put it away.
"You've been doing this every night for the past week."
A sheepish blush covered my cheeks, and I ignored the childish impulse to lie. "I - yes."
He glanced at the half-open bedroom door. "Your mother and I worry about you, Cassian. You had the opportunity to come with me to work-"
"I don't like blood."
Not true, but the truth was harder to explain.
Father sighed. "I know. You always say that, but you don't look uncomfortable right now." He adjusted his shirt for good measure, where a bit of his job must have leaked onto his real clothing beneath whatever counts for an apron. "You haven't wanted to leave the house much at all."
Why would I? Four year olds were the most physically uncoordinated creatures imaginable. I tripped over my own toe the other day and nearly split my face open on the edge of a stairwell. Not to mention the weaker immune system - I had no desire to catch an infection and test the childhood mortality rate of this time. Or place? Add in the fact that our house rested on the edge of a sandy desert that looked to run for hundreds of miles in all directions?
No, it was much better to stay indoors and learn as much as I can as quickly as I can. That was the only benefit to being so sheltered.
"I just like the house, Father," I answered. "It's safe here. Cooler here."
Our only cleaning robot forced its way past Father, interrupting whatever he was about to say. It picked up the towel from my earlier shower, squeezed any excess water from it into a porthole on its side, and then rolled back into the exterior hallway.
Father huffed. His distaste for the robot was openly a topic at many family dinners - his sister bought it for us, and he hates the idea of her charity. She ran a wealthy business in the capital, but I'd never met her.
"Look, Cassian." He shook his head. "You're coming with us to the celebration tomorrow. Your mother was adamant that we buy tickets for a show."
I smiled. "That's good to hear. And, okay."
His face brightened.
Did I want to go to the celebration? Not particularly, but I'll do it for her. They really have given me too much leeway anyway to stay home at such a young age, but I know how to make a sandwich, to let the cooler air at night circulate, to avoid running into anything sharp, and to not unlock the exterior doors to our home for anyone. I could take care of myself.
What could a group of people honoring some dead elder really need with another young child who barely understands the context anyway?
"And, son, this is going to stay in my office. Understood?"
I nodded, but I did not mean it. I won't let an overbearing parent stop me from gaining whatever information that I can about this new life. Impassable door to that office be damned. I'd tried every method I could over the past year, and whatever tech it had kept me from going inside.
I gestured to the datapad under his arm. "Father, what did that mean by falling sky objects? Like, meteors?"
He stopped at the door and turned to look incredulously at me. "You read all that?"
I frowned. "Most of it? I think?"
Father clicks the screen on again and reads it over for a few seconds. "Oh, it - uh - it means that we might have to spend some time underground soon."
"Underground?"
He waved his hands to assuage my worries. "I'm sure it's nothing to be worried about, Cassian. The sky won't fall down on us any time soon."
OSMOS V
September 14, 15:44 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE ELEVEN
The family house rested on the outskirts of a small city called Sanitas, and it took a little time walking on my tiny legs to begin to see its sand-blasted metallic structures. The town itself almost seemed to emerge from the sands of the Magna Desertus that enveloped it on all sides and partially buried it. Domes topped major buildings and homes, and only a few unfortunate structures had sharpened corners and edges. Stairs regularly descended below the surface level, and spoke to greater underground floors in places like markets or auditoriums.
Father always talked about upgrading our home to have a domed roof, but it was neither easy nor feasible to do. His work as a butcher was an important one, but not one that made a ton of money. Mother was barely the breadwinner with her work as a hospital clerk, and despite all of that, my parents did their best to never let me know it. If I were not an adult in all but body, I might have been blissfully unaware of the poverty we sometimes deftly avoided and occasionally embraced.
Mother clutched my hand in hers while I walked beside her, sweaty palms sticking together. With my free hand, I adjusted the black hood protecting the back of my neck from the sun streaming above, hoping the event was outside its reach. Father walked just behind us, and every time I looked back at him, he was scanning the crowds as though looking for something.
His eyes settled on a holographic banner above a squat dome jutting above the sands that read: "The Day of Salimus Rex" in the bold, black symbols of Osmotin. Beneath the larger celebratory message was an eye-catching advertisement, and Father perked at the sight of it. "Lucrecia, we should stop by on the way back."
Mother studied it for a moment as well, craning her neck to look past a throng of people walking across the street. "We don't need a new generator."
Father balked. "The one we have now barely functions."
"We can't afford a new generator."
"Perhaps, but Mattrima has never steered us wrong. We can make a payment plan with her-"
"Until we need a new one, I don't think we should be cutting into our savings."
The tension in the argument built until others started to notice. An elderly woman - old enough for her horns to have sprouted, apparently - shot me a sympathetic look from behind her kiosk selling some kind of future meat - not quite chicken, not quite beef. Given the way things were headed back then, I'm sure all the infrequent meals with meat I'd had were really meat substitutes. She waved one of her kebobs in my direction, a peaceful look on her face.
"Father, can we get some?" I asked in an attempt to redirect the tension. Their expressions soften and their volume lowers, while the onlookers returned to their usual Day of Salimus Rex routines. "It's not too expensive, right?"
Father glanced at Mother for a long second, and then he bent down to look at me in the eye. He had such presence - for a moment, all the worries in the world slipped away as he gripped my shoulders. "Cassian, don't worry about price. We're doing just fine."
Mother offered a small smile from behind her husband. "He's right, you know. We can certainly afford an early treat for the day."
If they say so…
The line for the woman's kiosk was not long, but the wait time distracted everyone from the earlier tension long enough for me to ask a question that bugged me. Research I've done has been limited - most of the time I've spent in front of any device has been learning the language, not actively searching the extranet for answers. Learning the interface was far more difficult than it needed to be.
"Who was Salimus Rex anyway?"
Father smiled, though I'm not certain if it was meant in a condescending manner or not. Frustrations slid into the forefront of my mind yet again as I prepared for the answer, expecting something said with kid gloves.
Instead, the man replied, "A general who lived a long time ago. He was born here and gave his life to defend the Triarchy from enemies beyond the stars."
I glanced up, confused - not all of those words had meaning for me, but I was fairly certain that the Triarchs were the leaders of the region, country, or nation. "How long ago?" And from beyond the stars… a general who fought alien invaders? "The stars?"
"Osmos V is just one planet in the greater universe, Cassian," Mother explained, as though it was not the most shocking thing she had ever said to me. "The general lived and died sixteen hundred years ago, the last time our planet faced visitors. You'll learn a bit about his final moments tonight!"
Osmos V…
Other worlds.
Horns.
Osmotin.
I…
This was incredibly bad news.
OSMOS V
September 14, 19:37 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE ELEVEN
The festival was largely a blur for someone in my predicament. Street performers, couples' dances, and clan-sponsored feasts were quite extravagant, but nothing really stood out to me. I was sure that Salimus Rex had been a good man and all of this was very important to honor local history.
But goddamn, this planet was not Earth.
I pinched my own arm, in case this was merely some elaborate four-year-long dream. No… no, this was real. This was my life now.
How could I not have seen it before?
In my own defense, until the people of this planet get old enough, they looked virtually identical to humans and had much of the same bodily functions. The food was different, yes, but a diet of meats, cheeses, and vegetables was perfectly normal. The sky was, admittedly, a shade of brighter blue than the Earth's own atmosphere, but I'd rationalized that to merely be some product of a futuristic, maybe cleaner Earth. I didn't have any context now for when I was, or if the planet I called home even existed anymore. I'd been reborn as an alien baby on another planet - all bets were off, and anything was poss-
"Look, Cassian!" Mother interrupted, gesturing toward the main event she'd been so happy to attend.
I really should continue my damn self-destructive spiral of doubt, despair, and destabilization, Mother. But, well, history of an alien planet was far more interesting to me, now that I knew that. With what limited knowledge of Osmotin I'd picked up, a lot of the history was still available to learn.
A shirtless man with long dark hair and four prominent horns carried a large prop blade that curved at the edge. He sidled across from his opponents, who gathered about the edges of the stage until they began to surround him. The stage actor playing the hero was the spitting image of Salimus Rex according to the statues that decorated public places for the event. Facing him down were several men and women in elaborate costumes, their own prop metallic weapons of all sizes and shapes in hand. Cheap, feathered wings stretched unmoving from their backs, barely hanging on through whatever ties they were using to keep them anchored to their backs.
The narrator cleared her throat, and music began to play as she fiddled with her blonde hair in one hand and something akin to microphone in the other. "And so, Salimus Rex left his fighting soldiers behind, soldiers who gave their final breaths to ensure that their fearless leader had but one moment. One moment to make things right, to disable the bomb, and to save the Triarchy from certain destruction."
The music reached its peak, and that was their cue to begin an elaborate mock fight. The choreography was rather impressive for a one-night show like this, and I could tell that the actors had had a ton of practice to really nail this. With each definitive blow, the hero of the moment defeated a crowd of goons before coming blade-to-blade with the apparent leader of the bird-men, a demonic masked creature with glowing eyes and gaunt, gray wings. The crowd was on the edge of their seats, and I had to admit that I was interested in their version of the outcome as well. The tension mounts among the audience as, in the background of the stage, a screen counted down to destruction.
The narrator, a young woman with a magenta dress robe, spoke into the projector, standing just on the edge of the staged battle arena. "The gallant Salimus Rex and the demonic Onimar Synn face each other for the final time before the doomsday device counts down to zero!" She pointed to the prop device, a machine designed to look like a whirring energy bomb in the background of the fight. "How will Salimus Rex cope with the potential destruction of Osmos V and the death of the Triarchs?"
The two actors traded blows, and I had to admit that the production had out-done themselves and whatever I expected of them. It was still goofy and over the top, but it had some merit. I had been in several plays growing up in my first life, and this performance was more than I expected when Mother floated the idea to me earlier. The audience itself was huge - I had not seen so many people in my second life in one place before, all enjoying the festivities and the events and coming together for a shared experience like this.
It was almost enough to distract me from the existential crisis that was my second life. This was another planet, not a future Earth…. I needed to research geography, politics, and history as soon as possible. A whole new world…
When Onimar Synn delivered a fatal blow to the abdomen with the strike of a perfected music cue, fake blood splattered across the stage in a gruesome display. Salimus collapsed to his knees, gasping for air and grasping at the wound. The demonic-faced birdman screeched, "You're bested, hero. There is nothing you can do but watch your nation burn and leave your planet to rot!"
Salimus Rex shook his head fervently. "No. No, no, no! I won't stand for i-it!"
"Don't make me laugh, Osmosian. You've no tools to defeat me nor my weapon. Even now, while we talk, I whittle the timer down to zero. Send your thoughts to whatever gods or ancestors you worship, scum!"
The timer ticked to ten seconds. I leaned forward to watch the final moments, expecting things to go the way of the heroic Osmosian. How would he turn it around in the next few moments?
Salimus shouted in rage and slammed his fists upon the ground. "This is your end!"
…
How did they do that effect?
A gray stone-coated Salimus Rex, looking every bit the statue that many street corners had temporarily arranged throughout Sanitas, rushed forward, unimpeded by whatever had occurred in that split-second. Onimar Synn, expecting this, swung his weapon down upon the head of Salimus Rex, but the Osmosian flicked a reinforced hand up and grabbed the handle with a grinding crack as the blade struck the open palm.
The metal of the prop blade began to coat the limb that gripped the weapon, extending up to cover most of the arm to the upper bicep. A moment later, and that fist rockets into the villainous actor's ribcage, hitting hard in a practiced maneuver that seemed so real that it beggared belief.
"The special effects are great," I muttered under my breath, still not sure how they got a spotlight to shine colored light on just the skin to convincingly pull whatever that was off. What were they implying about this general's real history, here? A mythological retelling with some ancestor protection from whatever clan?
The crowd erupted into cheers as the birdman fell to his knees, then to his stomach to lay dead, wings unfurled to almost completely cover his body. The actor playing Salimus Rex returned to his normal hue, inch by inch, and limped bleeding toward the device set to blow in the middle of the stage. A single punch later, and the actor collapsed to the ground to his injuries, the timer halted with only three seconds to spare.
"And with that final moment, Salimus Rex ensured the continued existence of Osmos V and our beloved Triarchy." The narrator finished with a bow of the head, and the crowd cheered once more, myself included.
On the way out of the venue, the sun had begun to set in the sky, bathing everything in a soft light. I spotted the main actor engaging with some of the crowd on the way out, and he seemed a popular enough man. Despite a youthful face, his horns suggested he was older than either of my parents, which was still wild to me and only further solidified how this revelation about Osmos V and its people forced me to reconsider everything I thought I knew.
I raced over to the actor with a quick word to Mother, hoping that my being young would be helpful for a change. The tall Osmosian twisted his head down to look toward me with a grimace on his face, a woman hanging on his left arm and trying to drag him away from me.
"Excuse me!"
"No, thanks, ki-"
"I'm not a kid," I argued, before realizing how impetuous that must sound to someone not in the know. So, you know, everyone. "How'd they do that thing?"
"The play? We wrote a script, er, made costumes, and uh-"
"No, that light trick across your skin! You almost matched the stage, and it was hard to see you if you weren't paying attention from where we were watching, up there."
My go-to maneuver when I wanted to be a cute toddler was to bounce on the balls of my feet.
The man stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "This a serious question?"
"Yeah!" I shouted. "I'm interested in how show business here works, and how they pulled that off could be helpful. A hologram, maybe? One set to stick to your movement patterns."
The actor frowned. "For a smart kid, you sure are dumb."
The woman dragged him away several feet before he turned and joined her in walking to whatever shag house they planned to visit. Her laughter trailing after them both would haunt me the next few minutes, I was sure of it.
"Wait! You didn't-"
He disappeared around the corner. Mother and Father caught up with me, concern evident on their faces.
"That was far better than last year," Father supplied as we rejoined the street traffic. "A snack on the way home?" Mother gave a nod, but I couldn't focus on anything like that right now.
"Did you see how they did that visual effect?" I asked, earning a confused expression from both of them. Are they really going to act stupid? "The one where his arm turned to metal, and his body to stone? It looked so real!" I had significantly more questions than I had when the day started, but I kept it to a relevant one.
Father and Mother held each other's eyes for a long moment, before Mother reached over to touch a nearby streetlamp. "Cassian, he did turn to stone. And to metal."
"What?"
And just like that, her fingers shifted to become the same material as the street lamp, a silvery metal.
"What?!"
Father gestured for a nearby bench that was mostly empty. "Cassian, we knew you'd learn about this someday - everyone will. We thought it… best that you develop without worrying about the Gift. Not everyone affords their children the same opportunity to grow without fear."
Hang on. Hang on.
She just turned her fingers to metal and then back. That actor really did become stone, all for a show. A miracle used for a one-night shitty community play.
"The Gift is something most Osmosians develop. A few gain no additional abilities, while others have abilities that do not fit the mold of the majority. We call those Exceptions," Father explained with an admonishing look. "I do not have the Gift, but your mother does. Chances are strong that you will develop the Gift in time."
I was truly at a loss for words. "What… how does it work?"
"Let's not worry about that right now," Mother replied, hands hanging once more at her side, unchanged from flesh.
I was absolutely not going to live this down. "So, is that how the story went? Salimus Rex used his Gift or whatever to defeat the birdmen's leader?" I'd have to unpack what Mother just did later.
Father chuckled. "I'm sure it's got the spirit of the truth."
"Some say he was the first one with the Gift, but there are records from before that," Mother added. "The myth about him still rages to this day."
"Those aliens - are they still around?"
She looked thoughtful for a second. "No, Cassian - they cannot harm you. The way the story goes, in the early days of the Triarchy, they went on to defeat the aliens and drive them off the planet. They might still be out there, somewhere, but history tells us that they have not returned yet."
Father shook his head in agreement as he led our group through the throngs of people, domed street lamps providing enough light to navigate the busy thoroughfares. The smell of something close to funnel cake filled my nostrils, baking pastries fresh in the rack. "If there's anything you learn from us, Cassian, it's that history is bound to -"
Something beeped in his front pocket. In mild frustration, he pulled a device from his coat and spoke into it. "Jula, now is not a great time-"
The name surprised me. Aunt Jula had, to my knowledge, not spoken with her brother directly for years, and the last time was with bad news that they hid from me. News I could absolutely handle, but my parents refused to share. The lack of trust to know things was reasonable and frustrating, simultaneously.
They'd kept growing up and gaining superpowers from me. Something a vast majority of kids my age likely already know. How is any of that fair? Yeah - they might be dangerous, but so is a gun.
Mother placed a concerned hand on Father's shoulder. "Horatio, is there-"
Father brushed her off absently and pushed through the crowd to find a simplistic bench to sit. I was not about to let this moment go, so I darted as quickly as my uncoordinated body could and sat next to him.
"That can't be true. Clan Zenoan would have noticed-"
I tried to get close enough to hear the other side of the conversation, to hear Aunt Jula's voice, but I couldn't make it out. Father lightly palmed my chest to force me to sit.
"We're sitting ducks, then. We need to mobilize, we need to-" His eyes met mine upon the word 'mobilize,' widening with surprise that I could hear him. "Jula, give me a second. Cassian's listening."
A pause as he stood.
"I cannot let my son overhear-"
"Oh, I'm sure you'd love to tell him all about it, but we can't-"
"No, we're not going to go there-"
"I will contact you later."
Father put the device away and lightly glared at me. Mother finally made her final approach through the crowd, her own face askew with worry.
"I'm sorry," I tried, realizing that I made this important conversation with an estranged sister impossible to have and speak openly. "Is something really wrong? You seem scared."
Father's smile did not reach his eyes, a silent message shared with Mother from his body language. "No, son, there's nothing wrong. We should get a snack."
The man was tired. So tired. They'd never shown their kid how much the world affected them, and... I did not want to be stressful.
I realized at that moment that what my parents needed more than anything was peace and quiet. I'd pushed them a lot today to reveal what they know, to talk about what they don't.
I was fortunate to be born on an alien planet with parents who cared. If I kept pushing, I'd push them away.
LOS ANGELES
September 14, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE ELEVEN
The boy could not help but badger his mom's friend for questions. He'd gotten to go with him to a special screening of a movie before it came out! All his friends down the street and all his cousins and, and all his preschool mates would be so jealous!
Yeah, the movie had been scary but the excitement over the whole thing just kept him thinking about it, even after all the ghosts tried to scare him.
"Gabriel, I did not see the ending coming. The man was dead the whole time!"
The man the boy'd only met once before nodded with a smile. "It was crazy, son."
Son.
For a second, the boy forgot where he was and wondered what his dad would think about a movie like this. It had been a while since he'd considered the man, but Mom always talked about him fondly. She'd not married anyone yet, and- oh, oh, oh!
"Are you gonna marry my mom?"
The man's tan skin turned paler. "I don't think so, Kyle."
"Boring," he muttered as he waited for Gabriel to escort him safely across the street. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
Kyle was not sure he believed the man he'd only met tonight, but this was a man who looked trustworthy. Nice. Thoughtful. He'd be good to Mom.
"Why not? She's a catch."
Gabriel clutched the boy's hand and walked him safely across the crosswalk. Kyle couldn't help but notice how wet the man's palm was.
"I'm too busy for your mom, Kyle," he said quietly as they rounded the corner into Kyle's neighborhood. "I wish I'd been able to do more for you and your mom. Tonight, I mean. She wanted to join us, but she'd already, uh, made plans."
"What do you even do, Gabriel? Mom acted like she couldn't tell me."
A pause. "I work for the government. Have to travel a lot; haven't been back to LA in," Gabriel met Kyle's eyes, "years."
"The guvnemen?"
"Gov-ern-ment," he repeated. "The people in charge of everything you see. I help them out."
"Must be a nice job when you can score movie tickets early!" Kyle shouted. "When's the next one? Can I go, can I go, can I go?"
The man breathed heavily and said nothing for a long moment. "I'm not sure they'll be another one, s-son."
OSMOS V
DECEMBER 22, 09:11 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE NINE
I was nearly seven years old - again - when my second life decided to veer further off from the expected course.
The emergency broadcast was on every news station, every data site, and every viewfinder. So total was the broadcast that even the equivalent of elementary school children could not escape it, despite Mistress Drucia's many attempts to divert back to the boring recorded lecture on the Magnus Desertus. She reached to cut the power of the screen altogether, but not before the subject of the forced broadcast finally reached her attention.
A hornless ambassador dressed in a deep maroon coat stepped into frame, his face far too grim for this to be anything but good news. The background of the shot was stale, nondescript, and not at all inviting - a clearer sign that whomever recorded this did not have time to prepare a statement of calm. I recognized the man vaguely, but only through sheer charm.
"Put it back!" a girl in my class shouted.
"I wanna see those lizard things!" a boy with brunette hair agreed, slamming his hand on the table. "They were eating all sorts of bugs! It was cool!"
I shot them both a death glare from across the room; the new kid Adrius was a handful of a child that would have gotten on my damned nerves as a teacher in my previous life. I had much sympathy for Drucia and anyone else who tried to watch over elementary age children like him. The temptation to be as loud, obnoxious, and snot-ridden as these little ones was an inborn trait that I had to remind myself to push away at nearly every turn. The few times I indulged - to keep up appearances - absolutely killed brain cells.
The woman ignored them after a quick admonishing look, her own face askew from the likely realization for what this kind of emergency alert might mean. I was glad for it, in a way. Drucia and I were kindred spirits then - the only ones in the room who had the life experience to understand the gravity of the situation.
"People of Osmos V," the man began. "You may recognize me, you may not, but I am Chief Diplomat Xandros of Clan Herod. I have served under Elder Seneca for many years in all matters related to his position as Triarch. As such, I have had many dealings with the public at large, but I must admit that I was not expecting such a large audience today."
He addressed Osmos.
As in, the entire planet.
This was not local, or national, but a global announcement to all of Osmos at once? I wished so desperately to see Mother and Father's reactions and not to be stuck among what counts as public education in this shitty town. The two of them would hopefully understand my reaction.
"As has been predicted, we are in an unprecedented period of our planet's history. The anomaly of our orbit has begun to flux far sooner than we anticipated, and for far longer than estimated. We have been fortunate so far that most debris has disintegrated on entry, has been too small to do damage, or has landed in remote areas or in our oceans."
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. As incredible as it was to learn of Osmos V's most fascinating quirk, I had been hearing about this for years. This was not surprising, and unless he was about to explain that they uncovered some new, bigger space object that will kill us all when it struck, I almost wanted to tune the whole thing out. Why something would force me to reincarnate on a gravitational deathtrap of a world was beyond me. Not sure that potential future superpowers were worth it if it meant that I died before it could come to fruition.
"During this period of fluctuation, nearly three years ago to the day," Xandros paused for emphasis, "Osmos V caught a passing interstellar ship within its fluctuating gravity field, and it was forced to crash land."
Drucia's mouth dropped open.
"What's 'interstetlar'?" a snot-nosed brat asked, drying his nose with his own arm.
"Hush now, children," the woman tried, but her heart was clearly not in it. I had been a teacher in my first life, and the first major world event I covered in class to my schoolchildren involved storming the U.S. Capitol. A year later, the war between Russia and Ukraine. I could certainly understand her reluctance to make a comment to explain to her students what was happening, why it was happening, and what to do with the information.
"The crew fortunately survived the journey, though not without physical injury. However, their ship was not as fortunate. The Triarchs, in their infinite wisdom, offered these beings a temporary home on Osmos V, until such a time that they could repair their ship and recover from their injuries. For this short time, our visitors have remained in hiding, and it became official policy of the Triarchy to maintain absolute secrecy. No one was to know about these visitors, the first in more than a century."
Why would they reveal themselves now?
Mobilize.
That was the word that Father used. Almost three years ago.
A chill ran down my spine.
"In communications with these beings from the stars, we have come to an agreement - they would share some of their technology with us, and in return, we would welcome them as planetary partners with an official proclamation. Under intergalactic law," the ambassador's voice grew strained, something he forced himself to correct quickly with a charming smile, "they have invited us to be part of their overall collective, as partners, allies, and shared stewards of Osmos V. The citizens of this planet and of the Triarchy will benefit greatly from this partnership for many years to come."
The diplomat beckoned someone to step into frame: a maroon-skinned alien with an insect-like carapace covering a lanky, humanoid form. The masculine, robed figure placed a comforting, five-fingered hand on the ambassador's shoulder. Human-like eyes accompanied a noseless face, lips thin and so muted with color they looked almost nonexistent.
"Allow me to introduce to you an Ambassador to his people," Xandros declared with a grin. "His interests represent the best of his race, and he means the best for all Osmosians. Currently, the language barrier between our two peoples is insurmountable except to our very best linguists, but we were able to translate a clear message that I wish to share with you today, from the Ambassador's own lips."
A pregnant pause filled the space, and I could not help but feel this was all too good to be true. The word 'mobilize' dominated my thoughts again.
"To my dear Osmosians," Xandros started to read from a prepared statement, "I am known to my people, The Reach, by my role as Ambassador. While our meeting was not under the best of circumstances, we hold no ill-will to the planet or its population. We plan to share with you the resources we have cultivated, and contact has been made with our homeworld and our other territories to ensure a healthy, two-way partnership. I have apologized to Elder Seneca of the Triarchs on more than one occasion, for our relationship thus far has largely been parasitic - we have enjoyed your hospitality, taken from the resources of our hosts. We wish for a symbiotic partnership in the future, where both sides may prosper." He paused for maximum dramatic effect and gestured toward the Reach Ambassador. "As a token of our new bond, I have gifted Diplomat Xandros with the height of our technology."
Xandros, on the Ambassador's cue, raised a finger into the air.
A moment later, a maroon suit of power armor erupted from his back and molded around his form, covering every inch with insectoid plates. Twin nodes, almost like antennae, rise from the shoulder pauldrons, their tips glowing the same golden color as the eyes on the armored face-plating. Gone are the features of the Osmosian diplomat, replaced with a full suit of high-tech armor. Xandros raised his scarlet-plated arms in demonstration, gesturing happily in the Reach Ambassador's direction.
Something felt familiar about the whole thing. The armor, the Reach… I could not place why. Beetleborgs - a cursed idea - came to mind.
"That's so cool!"
Of course Adrius would like that. It was impressive, I'll give it that.
"What is that, Mistress Drucia?" another student I hadn't bothered to learn the first thing about asked.
The teacher had no answers for her students this time, and neither did I.
"Our scarab technology creates a living bond with its host," the Reach Ambassador's message continued as he gestured with a long finger toward Xandros' armored breastplate, the details forming into an insectoid symbol. "With this armor, I am capable of creating nearly any form of technology with a thought, in virtually any field. Medicine, weapons, defense - the list goes on." The armor molded again with a flick of the wrist into something akin to a cannon, whirring with dark light within its barrel. "The Reach offers this Scarlet Scarab armor to the people of Osmos V, a perfect blend of Reach technology and natural Osmosian stock. This is a symbol of our future partnership."
Xandros waved one more time before the transmission ended, leaving me as dumbfounded as everyone else in the class, teacher and student alike.
OSMOS V
DECEMBER 22, 13:16 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE NINE
Father and Grandfather were clearly mid-discussion when I strode through the front door, as their voices trailed off. It did not take a genius to guess what they were discussing - how could anyone not be talking about the Reach?
"How was school?" Father asked nonchalantly. He was not hiding his distress well, and as I've grown older, he tends to be additionally stressed any time his father visited. The man had been largely absent from my childhood, but every few months, he reappeared, usually bringing news that could not possibly be good.
I raised an eyebrow - that's how they'll play it? Ignore it around me. Not today, of all days - today, I can be as curious as I want to be. "Mistress Drucia says the aliens are nothing to worry about, but I don't believe her."
Father tensed, but Grandfather chuckled. "You're right to be skeptical, Cassian. We've every right to be concerned."
"Now, Maximus, you-"
Grandfather scoffed. "Horatio, please - this is the smartest thing your so-called genius child has ever said. I'm going to indulge him." Father looked ready to argue again, but Grandfather continued. "What do you think about all this? What made you not believe him?"
I sat at the table and poured a glass of water from the plastic pitcher. "It seems far too good to be true. Aliens with strong technology that looks weaponized and just offering it to us? Like that? And you guys talk all the time about Elder Seneca and how you don't trust him-"
"Cassian, you should not be listening to our conversations."
I was not going to apologize. Those small pieces of information about politics were the only real pieces of information with context I'd gotten for years before they stopped trying to limit my screen time. It was silly how sheltered they tried to force me to be.
"I feel like they want something from us."
Grandfather smiled. "Any guesses as to what?"
"Money? Some, uh, resource our planet has. Or ship parts?"
My favorite horror movie of all time, and one that still scared the shit out of me as an adult, was the alien invasion story, Signs. I saw it at a way-too-early age while on a family trip to New Orleans, and I had to ask my mom to cover my eyes. Despite that fear, part of me has always been fascinated with the idea of what happens when two civilizations from other planets meet. The Reach Ambassador wanted a partnership, but he did not tell us what he wanted out of it. Maybe it was just a home for them, and that's all they needed, but I doubted anything was that simple. And hey - maybe they were deathly allergic to something as simple and ubiquitous as water too, if they proved violent.
Father sighed. "Your Grandfather thinks they want our Gift."
Oh.
That would make sense.
The Gift. An ability that manifests in most Osmosians - the ability to absorb nearly anything and then do truly wondrous things with whatever is absorbed. Matter, energy, DNA - any of it could be taken in by us and used for crazy things. An ability that would manifest in me in a few years, if it manifests at all. The chances were - well, not great. Until that day at the theater, I'd not even known Mother had the ability, and she hardly used it at all. Father and I were the only people in our closely tied family who did not possess the Gift (yet), and it was clear that there was bad blood there.
I wanted the Gift badly. An Exception would be nice, but it's difficult to say how useful one might be. Adrius bragged all the time about how his older cousin developed an Exception early, one that gave him an extendable, stretchy tongue, but he had none of the Gift.
"Why would the Reach want that? For themselves, or do they… want us?"
Soldiers for an army? Even a few squads of ten Osmosians could probably do some real damage, if what I've read about is even remotely true.
Rare material duplication? Absorb some diamond, become diamond, then cut the limbs off until you've got more wealth out of it. A scary exploitation, to be a living farm for some rare loot.
Grandfather looked amused at the questions. "Your guess is as good as mine, Cassian. I suspect we'll learn sooner than later."
I did not like the sound of that.
The word 'mobilize' came back to my mind.
"The Reach - if they're a threat, surely we have the numbers to beat them. They said that it was a ship that crashed, not a whole fleet."
"Assuming we can take anything they say as truth, then yes," Grandfather replied, "but I think it wise to not believe everything that you hear."
I glanced at Father and met his eyes. "You - do you remember that day? You mentioned to Aunt Jula that we should mobilize. Was that about this?"
Father said nothing for a long moment before slowly nodding. "Yes."
"Was that, uh, as a civilian? Or are you and Aunt Jula not civilians?"
Father blanched at that.
Grandfather swooped in to save Father from having to answer. "Cassian, why don't we go get some pre-dinner desert? You can show me what you're learning in school."
"No," I argued. "Just tell me, Father."
But the elder of the men was not having it. He grabbed me around the elbow and took me toward the front door. I almost fought the grip, trying for once to learn whatever it was that they were keeping from me for years. Yet, Grandfather leaned in close and halted me in my tracks. "Let's not, Cassian. Not now."
I stewed. "When, then?"
But Grandfather did not budge.
OSMOS V
DECEMBER 22, 19:33 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE NINE
I was not about to let them continue to lie to me without some inkling of the truth. At this point, the secrets were held for larger reasons than simply to hide them from their young child. It had to be more than that - I could handle any information they threw at me.
I looked far smarter than my peers and acted far more mature than any of them could ever dream. Their lack of trust could not have been from a lack of maturity - I hardly ever acted childish in front of either of them anymore, and I didn't bother to hide from Grandfather in the few times I'd seen him over the years. No, the adage of "an old soul" applied to me in a very literal way, and Mother and Father all but knew the truth.
The door to Father's office stayed locked, except when either my parents or a guest of theirs entered. I'd seen a few people come and go over the years, not all of them relatives, and I'm starting to suspect quite a few things. There had to be something good in there, in information at the very least, but I'd tried to look over the interface several times.
I approached the door again to try the basic route, but I was not keyed to enter, so it did not slide open. A bead of sweat dripped from sheer frustration, but I'd tried this countless times and I should not have expected it to change. Getting angry - well, it was pointless at this stage.
The only other interface was a manual console, a simple electronic panel built into the side of the circular door frame. It was not a digital code that I could simply record Father using, memorize it, and then input it. I could not swipe a key from his jacket pocket when he puts the clothes in for a wash. No - I'd need to somehow copy his handprint, which was physically impossible.
I'd seen a lot of secret agent media growing up, so my solution for that problem was to simply grab some packing tape, force Father to touch it with his whole palm, and then cut the excess away and hope, maybe, that the scanner does not pick up my hand and instead reads the grooves on the tape. I'd not tried that method yet, because, well, packing tape does not exist on Osmos V.
Packing tape might not exist in the whole universe.
I'd tried to find similar adhesives using the extranet, but online shopping was not a thing on Osmos V either. Ultimately, that was probably a blessing rather than a curse, but it was mighty annoying at this moment.
A year ago, I resolved to try to physically dismantle the manual console if I was desperate enough. Until this particular night, I did not think that I was, because taking the console apart might, A) jeopardize the relationship with my parents, and B) not even work, in which case I'd broken Father's office door for nothing.
But aliens announced their existence on the planet today. As far as I understood, there had not been alien visitors to Osmos V in any regular capacity for centuries. Until the Reach, a group that seemed helpful on the surface but absolutely is hiding something. They have an ulterior motive, and I was determined to see what the hell my family knew. If they knew something actually important, then I deserved to know.
I searched the house for a suitable tool, wishing the kitchen utensil I grabbed was more like a flathead screwdriver. As it was, it'd have to do. I'd had to push the oblong chrome cleaning robot to the side just to get into that cabinet, and I'd almost felt bad about it. It was difficult to explain how much that thing had meant to me as a very young toddler.
"I'd like to apologize, Father," I said aloud to no one, before taking the final few steps. Finding the right angle took a few tries, but... there!
I pushed on the tool with all of my might, forcing my body weight forward, until the knife slipped into the space between the wall and the console. Forcing a gap took some leverage, but I finally managed to pop the console's front away and reveal the circuitry and wires behind it. I almost giggled when I realized there was a blue, red, and yellow wire connecting to a power supply deep within the hole - some things are universal.
I gingerly reached into the panel with the knife and chose a cord to cut. Snapping through the first wire, the door was still unresponsive. The second - no change. The third....
Nothing.
At least it wasn't a bomb.
I tapped on the entrance to the office - no response. Determined, I pressed on the door with all of my weight. Nada.
I heaved and heaved.
Zilch.
Breathing heavily and sweating after a couple minutes of trying, I dropped the obnoxious and bent knife that had gotten me nowhere, and it clattered to the floor amid the silent house.
Fuck this. I shot to my feet and headed for my parents' room, glad that the two of them were on a date night. I scrounged their room, their drawers, their closet, their mattress, their bathroom. Apart from learning some things about my parents' sex life that no one needed to know, I found nothing controversial nor a link to the Reach.
After a couple of minutes of trying to put everything back where it was supposed to be, I had to breathe hard just to let the feelings out.
Not for the first time, I considered my last resort. If Father and Mother knew the fucking truth, maybe they'd have been telling me things all along. Maybe I wouldn't have to fucking go to school with a bunch of damn brats. Maybe I would know their secrets about the Reach, and I'd have some context as to why they treated me like no other child and kept me inside for much of my life up to this point.
I glanced up at the whirring sound of a door.
The door.
I rushed to the great room and practically squealed in delight.
Rolling into Father's office was his most hated possession: the cleaning robot. In its clawed appendage held the knife I'd dropped, and it moved haphazardly down an incline toward the innards of the chamber I'd never seen.
I'd never seen it go in there. Something must have changed - maybe tearing up the console actually did work, just not in the way I'd expected.
I bounded across the room and into Father's office with a childlike energy, tapping the robot on what would count for a head along the way. "Good fucking job!" I shouted in English, not in Osmotin, and it just felt so good to say aloud.
The large office was octagonal and filled with shelves, comfortable seating through purple fabric-covered chairs, and a large computer monitor that currently had data streaming across it at a speed that was difficult to parse. Several open windows, for lack of a better term, were displaying graphs indicating things like rate of temperature change, number of falling debris incidents per capita, and other graphs that did not make sense at a quick first glance. Three windows opened to extranet feeds that were far better managed than any I'd seen, though only some of it was in Osmotin - one was a news bulletin about the day's events, including speculation that the Reach would be releasing medicines into the market soon to potentially soothe the effects of some common ailments.
On the shelves lay various types of equipment, the most interesting of which was something that had to be a gun of some kind. I carefully picked it up without touching any buttons, pressing any triggers, or activating any switches. The weight was light, though cumbersome in my too-small hands. I could barely reach my fingers around the grip to the other side.
I put the gun down before I shot my own eye out - if that was even how this gun worked. I'd seen the effects of plasma-based laser weaponry on a few broadcasts over the years, which was a big reason why I'd initially thought this was just Earth in some future time. Laser weapons = future vibes.
The fact that my Father owned one was a shock. He did not seem the type. For any of this.
This was not an office - this was a resting place for someone who had a much bigger role than a local butcher. What that role was, was anyone's guess.
I glanced toward the door leading out, expecting that my luck would soon fail me and that my parents would return home any minute. I wanted desperately to push it, to search through the computer for any information. I almost backed out before I realized, well, fixing that panel was going to be impossible. I was already in deep shit - in for a penny, in for a pound.
Navigating the extranet and other readouts from this too large computer was far easier than it sounds, though the pages were clearer than any interface I'd seen before. I eventually found a way to enter a query and searched for Father's name, Horatio of Clan Bathar.
News article after news article filled the screen, though not as clearly written for the public as they might be on Earth. They instead read like public service announcements, and why my Father might have some written about him was confusing.
"Capital Local Exposes Exotic Species Trade."
"Unseen Evidence Comes to Light: Elder Seneca Faces Questions Tied to Corruption Investigation."
"Elder Gordia's Forces at a Hidden Stalemate with Elder Cato - Pressure Mounts Among the Triarchs."
There were more, but it painted a very funny picture of the man I thought I knew. Why these were all tagged with Father's name was what confused me - he was not mentioned at any time within the articles themselves, but rather tagged in the system by the user. Father had specifically tagged his name in these. Did he... expose someone for something? Was he once a bigshot investigator? A reporter? A spy?
I backed out and searched for the Reach, but it was difficult to parse through anything that was not current news. Article after article, bulletin after bulletin, replayed the news from earlier that day, some with commentary and some without. I tried again, shifting to information about the Reach that might not have been known to the public before today. Much less information popped up, but one piece of information stood out to me.
"The Reach Are Heralds for Change."
It was a message. A message to Father from Aunt Jula.
Dated from two years ago.
MUMBAI
DECEMBER 23, 1:29 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE NINE
The girl supposed that she would need to call them for money soon.
Everyone was really tense and had been for the last several days. A big attack happened on some government building in New Delhi more than a week before, and everyone she passed by wanted everyone from Pakistan to burn.
They were all too wrapped up in the tension for her to make a good mark. The bigger the crowd the more difficult the mark for her pickpocketing. She'd learned of these things over the years, and she knew how to find someone rich enough to give her something but not so rich that they'd send everything at her to take her down.
But tens of thousands of people were in massive crowds of protestors. Business had all but stopped, and it was starting to feel impossible to find a good place to rest without it getting trampled, or found, or interrupted by some bad person who wouldn't leave well enough alone.
She tried to cover the inhuman tone to her skin less these days, as she'd grown more used to the looks over the years. She told herself that they didn't bother her, and if anyone gave her crap, she was more than happy to show them exactly who they were messing with. But ever since the attack, she'd taken to covering herself if only to avoid the additional pairs of eyes.
With a heavy head, she approached a payphone and deposited pocket change she'd taken earlier that day. Or was it the night before? She couldn't remember.
"... Hello?"
"Abhi, give me a big job."
"That's my Jinx!" he exclaimed, and she could practically see his smile through the phone. "I knew you'd want another one. We've still got some funds from your last one, but we're running real low."
She nodded, having felt that herself. Part of her wondered when Abhi and the others were going to cut her in fairly, as she's the one who does all the heavy lifting.
Abhi directed her to a bank near the edge of the financial district, one away from any major protests. Fatima said it was a perfect time to strike, because the cops were too busy dealing with the attack, the protestors, and the aftermath to do anything about it quickly.
Jinx approached the back of the facility, face cloaked alongside the rest of her to avoid notice by any cameras. A couple security guards were stationed in the back, but they wouldn't know what to do momentarily.
She pressed her feet into the pavement, wiggling her toes against concrete, and felt the connection spike as she focused. With a thought, she confirmed the location of the main vault, as it, too, was nestled in the earth nearby, and she could feel their kinship.
Raising a hand, the girl willed natural forces around her to listen. They regretted what she would have them do, and she knew that she was close to gaining more from that connection than she had previously, but she would have to do with what she could manifest now.
A gout of pink flame crossed the street and impacted with the back of the bank, the flames surging immediately to encompass a large gap blown through the stone. She willed the earth's winds to carry her and dashed forward with a speed that the guards could not match, pink light trailing around her feet. Before they could even turn to aim their guns in her direction, she was already into the chamber just before the vault.
More pink fire erupted between her and the hallway leading toward the rest of the modest bank, obscuring her from any interior guards who may try to do something heroic. They wrapped around to coat the entrance she'd made as well, sealing her in a flame-like cocoon that they'd surely be too scared to pass.
She focused on the metal of the vault door and placed her hands upon it. Earth began to vibrate beneath her feet, and she forced those tremors forward and toward her hands. Voices shouted to intercede, to intercept her, but she couldn't hear them over the cracking of the fires she stirred nature to burn.
Jinx watched with excitement as the vault door began to dent, to crack, and to rend open - it frustrated her how long that took, because her flames were beginning to die down by the time she finished. Still, a gap formed, one she was able to traverse, and she slipped through it and began taking anything she can get her hands on. She slipped money into her pockets, into her gloves, into her pants, into her scarf, into her coat, and into her hood.
She knows better than to press her luck and take more.
Slipping through the gap and watching the dwindling flames, she spotted the guards attempting and failing to progress, none of them brave enough to try their luck with her fire.
Jinx blew a kiss toward one of them with a childlike grin and then darted back out the way she came, the summoned fire doing nothing to harm her. The exterior guards began firing this time, but she was ready for that and hurled her hands backward. Twin bolts of pink light shot across the back of the bank's lot, but they both went wide and still spooked the security enough that they miss all their shots.
She spotted the getaway car around the corner and bolted to it as quickly as she could, feeling most of her power spent. She hoped she would not have to do anything else like that again for a while, because she doubted she could spark more than a candle.
A gleaming Abhi opened the door at her approach, and she dove into the backseat, heaving. He sped away before anyone was the wiser - that took, at most, a few minutes to top them off for the foreseeable future.
All in all, a successful job.
She doubted it would be long before she had to do that again, but for her own sake, she hoped she got enough to keep them satisfied. To keep her fed, clothed, and maybe to stay in a nice place for a few weeks.
She was happy to help them out, as they'd helped her out so much.
OSMOS V
February 25, 13:22 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
I was eight years old - again - when my second life decided to veer even further from the expected course.
It was a clear, warm day, a welcome pleasure for geyser season. A new waterspout had burst from the sands just outside of Sanitas, and now only two days later, even school children were asked to help in the preparation for new, temporary aqueducts.
Hands caked in mud, I cursed at the Reach's new scanners. This was the second time in six months that I'd had to work a geyser, and all of it had accelerated when they introduced technology into the market that could predict where a new waterspout would come. I was sure that small desert towns like Sanitas were overall better off thanks to it, but would it kill a guy to ask for a cheap robot labor force that could work these canals for us?
I was certain that the other kids agreed.
"Cassian!"
I flipped around and pushed the shovel tool further into the gunk. "I don't want to hear it, Adrius."
The brunette boy was nearly a year older but had become as close a friend as I'd allowed. Not a child and not an adult - a truly painful combination. If not for some very powerful hormones, I wouldn't have bothered dealing with anyone, even family. No man is an island.
"Seriously, you have to listen to this. My brother saw something last night. It was like a meteor! He thinks it landed nearby and wants to go and check it out!"
I stared, disbelieving. Because of the unique properties of Osmos V, it was likely for debris to fall toward the planet all the time, especially in the fluctuation period. They say it will end any day now, but I'm not certain. "It probably didn't even land. Far more likely it broke up."
Adrius shook his head and absently ran a hand through his hair. He frowned when he realized it tracked mud through his brown curls. "No, but really, Cassian. He wants to go tonight and try to find it."
"If it landed, there is no chance that it isn't crawling with people by now. We'd be picking over nothing at best, or actively getting in the way of some minor or major clan at worst."
"Don't be annoying!" Adrius cried while trying to rid his hair of the mud, only making things worse. One of the supervisors of the irrigation channel site walked by and shot him an admonishing stare, and he blanched and quickly started digging again. "I'm going whether you come or not, but I could use the backup."
"I'm not being annoying by being reasonable, kid."
"Kid? I'm ten months older than you!"
He'd repeated that mantra so many times it was old hat by now.
"So act like it."
The boy pouted and returned to work, absently. His muscles strained under the labor, and I don't think any school credit or work credit was worth forcing children to do this in the desert heat. Not when our planetary "partners" could have given us damnable robots to do this instead.
I felt guilty the more I considered Adrius and his brother Felixus. Good kids who were just that - kids. I knew them well, better than many in my immediate circle; I'd spent the last Founding Day at their home and had commiserated with them over their uncle's not great cooking.
Adrius never let an idea go. He was stubborn to a fault, and his brother was nearly as bad. Felixus was once convinced that the two of them were Exceptions, and that his apparent ability to jump higher than most was the Gift he'd inherited instead of the usual absorption package. It was barely an inch higher than other kids in their class, so if he was right in that assumption, then he'd gotten a shitty genetic deal.
Fearing what would happen if they held onto this bad idea like the others, I tried again to convince him of the error of his ways the next time we got a break. Other students and peers mingled around the refreshment tables while the sweat from the sun poured from their foreheads, but I pulled the boy aside and away from them all.
"Let's say you found a meteorite. What would you even do with it?"
Adrius perked up from his sandwich. "What would I do with it? Keep it forever as a keepsake for how badass I was as a kid? Sell it and get rich?"
I pressed harder. "So your options are to put it on a shelf as a useless souvenir or to hope you find someone who will sell it to you for a price that actually means something?"
He stopped sipping his water abruptly, eyes unfocused. "You don't know!"
"Sure I do. My mother tried to pawn some jewelry once. She went to two different places, and they both offered her different prices based on what they thought it was worth. The real price? Worth more than either offer."
I didn't tell him that it was my first mom who tried to do that, but he'd have no context for reincarnation. It wasn't a widely held religious belief anywhere on the planet, if my research is clear about that. The instant I knew enough Osmotin to research that, I looked for any reference to it in case there was a local explanation for how I'd ended up here.
There wasn't.
"As long as I get a thousand trines, then I'll have rich!"
A thousand trines was indeed a lot of money for people around here, but a drop in the bucket compared to anyone who mattered. I did not have a great eye for the value of things compared to dollars from my first life, but a single trine was usually something close to three and a half bucks. The trickiest thing about this nation's currency was that its value could fluctuate slightly based on which Triarch's face sat upon the coin you used - this year, Elder Gordia was in vogue, while Seneca was all the rage for the past three. I'd read a lot of folks were happy with the change, because Gordia's old as dirt.
I merely glanced at him incredulously. "A thousand trines is nothing to a collector. And if whatever landed is a rare substance, then you could get a hundred times that easily, if you ask the right person."
His eyes bugged for a second, the width displaying the deep, blackened circles under the eyes that I once mistook for make-up on my parents. Turned out that most Osmosians develop that at puberty, and I'd started to get my own, however faintly visible they were as of late. It frustrated me more than a bit that Adrius had prominent blackened lines encircling the base of his eyes, as childish as it felt to compare sometimes. He was nearly a year older, anyway, so the whole thing was unreasonable to do - he was an actual child.
"But none of that matters, anyway. You'd never get someone local to have that kind of money to give you, nor would someone give that much money to a child. Your best bet would be to cut in your parents, in which case they wouldn't let you have that much of the profit and you'd be in trouble for messing with the thing in the first place."
Adrius got progressively redder the longer I continued, but I was not yet done and held up a hand to cut him off.
"Or you could try a dumber plan to make false identification papers for Felixus, and try to convince everyone your fourteen year old brother is just short and baby-faced for his twenty odd years. That might bypass the age problem, but you'd have to take it to an appraiser from one of the major clans in a bigger city like the capital, and I don't need to tell you that that trip is unlikely."
Adrius crushed the cup in his knuckle-white hand, spilling water across the sands below his feet. "Cassian, you always do this know-it-all routine."
"I don't think I do it enough," I argued. "You have this thing-"
Adrius stomped his foot in a movement that would be adorable if it weren't arguing for something so damn stupid. "We're going to do it, no matter what you try to shoot down. Felixus already had Ducius plot a route this morning, and we're going to head out tonight."
I bit my tongue at the next thought. They were fortunate to own Ducius, their nicknamed weather drone that had been in their family's possession for most of my friend's life. However, programming the robot's flight pattern was begging to leave a digital trail for their parents to find afterward.
"We already told Mother we were staying at your place," Adrius added quickly.
Before I could argue otherwise, the bell rang for us to return to our duties, the sun still baking us alive while we dig channels for water, to 'build character' according to our school's mission during this season. If I had a human body, the summer heat combined with the idiocy of my friend would have surely killed me.
I sighed.
"What time are we leaving?"
I was not about to let the kids do it alone. If I could keep them from making a dumb decision while looking for whatever landed - if anything did - then I could stave off the worst of the consequences that would befall them.
OSMOS V
February 25, 20:45 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Mother slapped a piece of parchment onto the table, the sound echoing throughout the small kitchen. Her exasperated face stretched with clear exhaustion and discomfort. I pushed away a forgotten bowl of stew to study whatever was clearly bothering her, partly worried that she'd already somehow learned of the plan with Adrius later that evening.
Several blocks of symbolic text stretched across the page, its edges furled and frayed. A burned space on one corner burned away part of the message, and I could not help but frown. The message was in a foreign language, and not one I'd researched previously from any of the cultures of Osmos V.
No - this message came from the Reach.
"I cannot make heads or tails of this," Mother clarified at my look of confusion. "Every time I think I have something, it flows further away from me."
"Does Father have you working on this?"
She shook her head after a long hesitation. "No. It's nothin-"
"If you're about to tell me that it's nothing for me to worry about, save your breath."
Mother glanced away for a long moment, and a pang of guilt arose in my throat. Ever since I exposed my father's work, things have not been the same as they'd always been at home. Opening that particular Pandora's Box had brought with it other issues that, well, years of therapy might not fix. They were not my real parents anyway, so surely there couldn't be any real long term issues.
Surely.
She finally met my gaze. "I found it at work, on one of my supervisor's desks. The only word I think I recognize is gadopen." She pointed to one particular section of the parchment and roughly circled its twisting shapes. "Gadopen is a medicine for treating heart disease, so I thought that maybe the Reach is in contact with the hospital or a doctor there."
I remembered the original message from Xandros - every week, at least one of my nightmares involved a twisted version of that message followed by a complete unraveling of society as the Reach brought their power to bear upon the planet. To say that I had been able to get a single iota of regular sleep in months was an understatement of the issues at hand. All that, and the invasion had not even happened.
Yet.
In that message, he promised many things like technology, medicine, and other benefits. If they truly had no ulterior motives, then uplifting the Osmosian way of life in many fields would be useful to everyone. I was not convinced they were not plotting something, and neither was Father. He'd been gone for months on a trip to the capital with the others, and I could not wait to hear whatever his next message might be for us. Perhaps he'd reveal the one key piece of information that unraveled all of it, once and for all.
"Maybe they're just finally owning up to their promises," I offered. "A few medical breakthroughs would change things."
Mother nodded. "I considered that, too, but trusting any of the patients with anything they make? Is it worth it?"
I shrugged. "If I found out tomorrow that I have cancer, and they offered a cure that I knew to work? I'd take it."
She pursed her lips and said nothing.
That was truly how I felt. That was the reasonable answer. It was okay to look a gift horse in the mouth sometimes, if it meant that a lifetime of pain, anguish, and weakness would go away. My aunt in my first life died of leukemia when I was seventeen, and if the Reach offered her a solution? I'd want her to take it, even if there were other side effects, because the alternative was to lose her only two days after her diagnosis.
The clock struck the turn of hour, and I cleared my throat. "I'm gonna go to bed early. I've got a test tomorrow, and I want all my energy for it."
It was a lie, but a reasonable one, and Mother barely acknowledged the point, instead wrapping up the parchment and beginning the process of cleaning the kitchen. I'd offer to help her, but I couldn't get my brain off of the Reach, Father, and whatever it was that I was about to discover.
OSMOS V
February 25, 23:08 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
The night air was cool within the Magnus Desertus, something that made living within its borders largely possible. Without it, keeping homes cool would be exorbitantly expensive for families like mine, and I'd spent much of my second life with the window wide open at night to let cool air circulate. The winter months made even that impossible. As cold as it was right then, I was grateful to have bundled more intentionally.
Adrius and Felixus led the way through the sandy dunes and past craggy rocks, far too excited to care as much about the temperature as I did. The elder brother was the spitting image of the younger - dark hair, tanned skin, green eyes, and an abundance of freckles across every exposed piece of skin. They were both adorably wearing matching scarves around their necks for warmth, and I was convinced that I would heckle them for it at some point during the night.
Ducius, the cylinder-shaped drone with red and white plating, guided us through indistinct desert walkways. It hovered thirty feet above us and bathed us and our immediate surroundings in faint red light, casting everything in an ominous glow that spoke volumes over how stupid this entire thing was. Whatever path they'd programmed into it felt erratic and mostly pointless, and we'd had to deviate once already to avoid a nighttime cliff-drop to injury at best, to death at worst.
"We're farther in than I thought we would be," I finally say, stepping through a small wall of desert brush that were mostly unprickly. "How close is it?"
Felixus huffed and rubbed at his sweaty face, pudgier than his brother. He reminded me of how unhealthy I had been in my early high school years. "It shouldn't be too much farth-"
"Can you check?"
Adrius answered for his brother with a high-pitched whistle, and the drone floated down to eye-level. With a whirring noise and a beep, Ducius opened a plate on its head to reveal a computer screen, glowing in white light. Etched across it in tight, crimson lines was a map of the surrounding area, showing basic terrain with a distinct lack of detail. A dotted blue line showed we were close to the destination, and a small panel near the top revealed the mathematical calculations to predict the probable place of landing.
"Felixus, you're surprisingly good at this."
The brother waved it off. "It's not a big deal. There's very little to do at home except play with Ducius."
"And ignore me," Adrius muttered.
If we pulled this off, then they were bound to get into trouble if they didn't cover their tracks. "Do you have a plan to wipe its memory of the map you made?"
The brothers stopped and stared at each other for a long two seconds. Finally, Felixus wiped at the sweat on his brow. "Oh, uh, yeah. I can do that. Why though?"
"He's trying to avoid getting us into trouble," Adrius finished for me, sheepishly looking in my direction. "That's smart."
It took the elder brother a moment to realize the implications. "Oh."
"Yeah. Just looking out for you. How much longer, then?"
The brothers crowded around the drone's head, their faces alit with red light. "It should be just ahead." The elder brother pointed to an area ahead of us, a wide, three story wall of rock blocking our view. "Behind that ridge."
The slow climb into that position took several minutes until we could finally see… something. The excitement upon getting to see whatever it is almost drowned the thoughts of how exhausted I would be in the morning. This was not easy for a lanky little kid without a regular exercise routine.
Even without the ring of red light from Ducius, whatever had struck the ground here was putting off its own subtle glow in a few places, little pinpricks of light that strike into the darkness around it. Felixus excitedly begins to slide down the embankment, and not at all smoothly as gravel-like stone and sand drift ahead of his path and nearly force him to tumble several yards. Adrius makes to follow him in the same path, but I yank his shoulder back, much harder than I meant to.
"Hey! Watch it!"
"Careful, kid," I warn, hoping that he would ease into it. Felixus had the advantage of several inches of height and a more solid build, even if he were pudgier than either of us. "No collecting any money or trophies if you break your neck down there."
Adrius acknowledges the point and more carefully follows after his brother and their drone, the circle of light inching closer to reveal the object that struck the ground and carved a solid forty-yard chunk in sand and stone. I was expecting Felixus to find a meteorite or some other basic space debris, or perhaps to find nothing at all, but nothing could have prepared me for this.
"Whoa! It's a ship!"
Good god. As if living here couldn't be any more difficult.
A metallic object coated in sleek black metal, a clearly damaged propulsion system on one side and jutting from the ground. Cracks ran along its surface in a myriad of paths, power still running somewhere within its structure. A clear line indicated an opening, and Adrius hurriedly rushed to run his palm along the crack.
"Not to be the bearer of bad news," I said with a harsh sigh, staying as far back as possible and angling to scramble up and away from the thing, "but there's a strong chance we're getting enough radiation to give us cancer in a few months."
Felixus hissed. "Ducius would notice it."
What?
"Your weather drone has a rad counter?"
They both ignored me and continued to poke the small alien ship. A few basic escape pod designs from different stuff I'd seen in my first life came to mind, but this was a bit bigger than that. There could be two or three aliens in that thing, waiting to eat us. Or probe us. Or both, in whichever order suited them.
I shivered.
Whichever it was, the ship didn't respond to the brothers' poking, and I couldn't help but try to be the voice of reason again. "Have Ducius take a picture or a video. We gotta get out of here - it's too heavy to lift. This was really cool, but we need to get go-"
Felixus slammed his hand on the rim of the ship, and it - unfortunately - responded. The elder of us shifted back several feet as a panel on the roof opened in a swirl of hazy steam.
"Run!" I shouted, pushing against gravel and sand to climb the incline as fast as possible. I heard Adrius following, but his brother had yet to move from his position, locked in place from terror, from awe, or from stupidity. I sighed and flipped around without sliding down, maintaining my solid ground for a second. "Felixus! Don't stand there! Get a move on!"
The boy only made it a half-step backwards before the steam cleared enough to see what lie within. Green light faintly emerged from the interior of the ship, growing brighter the more of the mist dissipated. Raised upright on its hind legs was a huge four-legged creature, its matted fur a muted orange color. A long tongue swiped from its toothy mouth, an odd color in the midst of the weather drone's and the ship's glow. It twisted its movement in the elder boy's direction, sniffing at the air from its eyeless face. Clawed feet gripped at the metal of the ship with enough force to dent it, and… and….
and…
I moved without thinking.
A rock the size of my palm struck the ground nearest to the creature's left flank, missing widely. Yet, it gathered its attention.
Adrius continued climbing until he was a solid three feet behind me, shouting down at his brother to run. "Felixus! You gotta move!"
Finally, the elder teen shifted into a running position and bolted up the inclining sand and stone, dropping rocks and sand behind his path.
I prepared to throw another rock to divert its attention away from him, but the alien canine-like creature already had its focus trained on me. It bent at the knees and readied a pounce. A half-second later, it launched itself into the air and covered the distance to me in but a moment.
I threw myself to the side and slid roughly across the earth, the immense body of the almost horse-sized alien striking into the incline in a cloud of dust. Pricks of pain ran down my arms and legs, but I didn't have time to dwell on it. The alien recovered from its crash landing quickly and swiped down at me with a front claw, tearing into the flesh of my leg.
A shriek of pain escaped my lips, and it craned its neck to bite into my chest. I rolled away just enough for it to miss its initial attack, the movement jostling a surely bleeding wound in my left calf muscle. I struck at the thing with a weak fist, smacking it in the face with all the might of a stupid ten year old.
It had the decency to wheel back in what must be surprise and definitely was not pity.
Against the sight of its oncoming onslaught, I threw up my arms in sheer panic, barely conscious of my surroundings from the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. Eyes closed for what must be the end, the canine alien struck at my crossed arms and torso with a mighty swipe of a clawed limb.
My body tumbled end over end in the air until I slammed hard into the earth several yards away. Bile rushed to my throat, and I couldn't keep it down, the substance coating the front of my shirt. Eyes unfocused from the pain in nearly every muscle group, I watched hazily as the alien raced toward me, teeth bared.
A crunch.
Shattered canine fangs fell to the sand in pieces.
I blinked, confused.
A distant Felixus whistled, and Ducius began to beep with alarm, hovering closer and closer to the canine creature. The alien with wounded teeth whirled around to study the drone long enough for me to force myself to my feet. The weather drone shone with bright crimson light for all to see for potentially miles, an emergency pattern of light I'd only seen once before, and the volume of its alarm klaxons was significant. The canine tried to angle a strike of its claw toward the drone, but it sped out of the way and merely angered the damn thing even more.
Adrius clambered down to me and began to pull on my arm. "You're okay, you're okay. Let's, uh, get you-" I winced in pain as his pulling forced me to put my weight on the wounded leg, and he stared with wide eyes.
"Other side," I hissed and gestured.
He maneuvered around to take weight off of the wounded leg as he helped me to more solid ground as swiftly as his legs would take him. Felixus was at the top to join us, eyes torn between watching the alien chase after the robot and watching his brother escort me closer to safety.
"We need to move," I muttered, pushing forward with all of my thoughts on getting out of this alive. "That won't last forever."
Felixus took over for Adrius in holding up my weaker side, and we began the trek through the desert, leaving Ducius behind to keep the thing busy.
"It's blind," the elder brother muttered after a long moment. "It doesn't have eyes."
I realized what he was getting at a moment later. "Smart. How long, uh, can Ducius do that routine without you there to guide it?"
Felixus and Adrius did not have an answer.
OSMOS V
February 26, 02:42 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
I was not sure how I was going to explain any of this to my parents. Truth be told, I was probably still on thin ice from the stunt I pulled with Father's office, even years later. I threw myself into danger intentionally with a reckless decision that could have ended with me dead or worse - Felixus and Adrius dead.
I had a truly awful three-pronged gash on the back of my leg, and putting any weight on it was excruciating. Blood had soaked completely through the simplistic binding we'd made with one of the brothers' scarves. Each step closer to Sanitas was a step closer to having to tell the truth, and I knew in the long run that this was a lesson that the brothers had to learn.
Had I not been there…?
"Cassian, you…," Adrius repeated for the umpteenth time, perhaps more in shock than any of us were. "You're okay. You're okay."
We cut through the city's perimeter. The familiar sights of domed buildings amid sandy winds added a layer of security to our trek. Whatever that creature was, if it was going to follow us here, surely some adult would notice before it got us.
"I will be okay," I said, fighting through the weakness from losing so much blood. Honestly surprised that I was still conscious. "Stay long enough for my mother to look you over."
The brothers did not object, but as we passed further into familiar territory, their movements became slower and more deliberate. I couldn't help but smile through the pain - kids will be kids.
The exterior door to my home on the outskirts opened with barely a sound. Mother strode across the sands, fury pouring from every pore. "Where have you been?"
"Mistress Lucrecia," Feliuxus pointed to my leg, "Cassian is hurt. We're sorry! We tried to find this meteor we saw but found an alien instead, and it attack-"
"Cassian!" The anger fell away from her in an instant. She dropped to her knees in a whirl and looked over my leg. "Are either of you hurt?" The brothers shook their heads. "Felixus, get you and your brother home. Thank you for getting Cassian here. We'll talk more later."
They scurried off in a hurry once it was clear that things were going to be fine for them. I didn't blame them for not trying harder to stay.
"Mother, they were so stupid, they were going-"
She glared at me. "They?"
I deserved that.
"We need to get you to the hospital," she muttered as calmly as she could, clearly breaking under the stress. "The cuts are bad enough, but you said an alien did this?"
I glanced at her. "You're taking this remarkably well."
"How else am I supposed to take it, son? Acting hysterical is not going to get you to feel any better any time s-soon." She took a deep breath. "An alien?"
"It climbed out of a ship or a pod or something. I'd never seen anything like it before that was native to Osmos V. It's possible, I guess, that it could just be an animal I didn't recognize, but it sure looked like a spaceship's crash landing."
Mother nodded as she pulled the scarf down long enough to get a look at it and then tightened it again and supported my weight with her shoulder. "If that was really something from another planet, then there is a dangerous chance of infection."
Maybe it was the weakness from loss of blood, but something felt … off. What, exactly, I was not sure how to describe. The broken teeth… The lack of further injuries…
"I think I have the Gift."
She paused and locked eyes with me.
"It tried to bite me and walked away with broken teeth. I didn't - I didn't see how or when, but I think I protected myself. Became like stone?"
Mother clearly did not know what to think, hesitating for several moments before meeting my eyes again. "The Gift's not unheard of for someone your age, after exposure to trauma, but I hoped you had more time." She paused again and then placed her left hand against the ground beneath her feet. A moment later, sandstone rock encased her from finger to elbow. "This may sting, but it'll better keep any infections away until we can get you to a hospital."
She gripped with gentle fingers the back of my left knee. Sandstone rock swirled from her arm and down my leg until it coated the wound. It brought with it an itching, stinging pain that slowly subsided to a dull ache.
"I didn't know you could do that."
Mother shook her head, sighing. "There's a lot you don't know about the Gift, Cassian. While I am glad that it may have saved your life tonight, rest assured that with it comes a myriad of unique challenges. In some ways, I hoped you'd take after your father."
I didn't. I didn't want to be powerless in this new life.
LOS ANGELES
February 25, 19:51 PST
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Kyle paced across his hallway carpet. He was letting his nerves get the better of him, and he needed to be strong. In a moment like this, he had to be strong. A piece of paper crumbled in his tightened fist, and he could barely bring up the strength to look at it again. There was too much going on for him to be worried about this.
Distantly, his mother struggled with remaining strong. She frantically spoke on the cordless house phone in an animated voice, though what she said made no sense to him. The volume on the television was far too loud, showing the same thing on every channel.
"… roup including my hometown, Coast City's own Green Lantern, have banded together to face off against the invaders!" An explosion in the video feed sounded so loud that it seemed to interrupt those in the studio.
"That's right, Rucker," another news person interjected. "Seems the latest trends in law enforcement around the country have struck a partnership to duke it out with our enemies together. How nice that we have aliens of our own to combat these aliens? If we live to breathe another day thanks to these folks, let's hope they don't take advantage of our weakness and use their newfound alliance against us."
"These guys fight for justice, Godfrey. If they've formed a league, then surely they can-"
Kyle tuned it out and considered whether he should be focused on the alien invasion happening a few states away or on the note he found on his pillow this morning. His mother - well, she hadn't mentioned it to him. Did she know? Or was she pre-occupied with the news?
He read the words one more time, slowly to himself and almost under his breath.
"Kyle,
I know you were hoping I'd stick around longer to hang out, but I'm afraid I can't refuse. My bosses have finally called me up to headquarters.
If you don't see me by Christmas this year, then I'll be sure to send a card by your mom and let you both know how I'm doing.
…
Kid, these days hanging with you have been some of my brightest.
Love,
Gabriel"
Kyle couldn't feel good about it. Gabriel had spent a lot of the last three or four weeks with Kyle and his mother. He hated to see the man go, just like that, but he'd just have to wait on Gabriel to come back so he can give the man a piece of his mind. Kyle knew his mother's heart would be broken. He and she had been flirty, after all!
The boy took a deep breath and then walked into the living room, his mom's frantic voice clearly upset. Some woman on television was talking about that weird bat-guy from Gotham blowing up one of the aliens, but he was only half-listening to the details. "Mom, I found this-"
"What honey?" She looked away from him as the conversation on the phone continued. "So we should head to shelters? What if there is not a shelter? Is base- okay, okay, anything underground."
With a single hand, she pushed Kyle toward the basement door and pointed fervently. Pulling the phone away from her ear, she practically hissed, "Get in there for now, I'll be with you in a second."
He listened to his mother, but he couldn't help but feel sad that she hadn't answered him or noticed him. They said the attack was in Nevada - that's states away from LA! They were going to be fine!
Several varying plotlines are starting to build. One with Kyle Rayner, probably going to be a Green Lantern eventually, and another with Jinx, developing her sorcery. But it is interesting to see the main character have to deal with the Reach inhabiting Osmos V. I suspect that Vulpimancer, wherever it came from, might not be done yet.
One of my favorite things to do in this story so far is the worldbuilding for Osmos V. I have enjoyed parsing these details into the writing, but I thought it might be fun to share some of these details with you all here.
Osmos V is the fifth planet of the Osmos system, and its only inhabited world. This system is one of many inhabited systems within Frontier Space, the larger part of the universe that the Guardians of the Universe do not regularly patrol - which means that there are no Sector Lanterns watching over Osmos V's neck of the woods. (More on that within the story itself soon.)
Osmos V - and the greater system as a whole - faces a unique cosmic problem. Called the Flux by the locals, a gravitational anomaly occurs roughly every twenty years and can last for months or for years. The Flux does not impact the usual gravity that those on the surface feel, but it does influence the gravity of its near-space, causing fluctuating changes in its intensity. Periods of greater intensity within the Flux can cause objects within near-space to be drawn to the planet, at a rate that is higher than the usual rate that other planets would face without it. Osmos V, as you might expect, has a rather large field of space debris, and many of its scientists speculate that it may be a matter of time before the Flux ends civilization as they know it.
The Flux has strongly influenced the geography of Osmos V. Harsh deserts, crater-fields, and seasonal geysers are common across its three major landmasses. The events of the story thus far take place on its largest continent, which predominately features the Magnus Desertus - the largest desert in the world. The other two continents are smaller and more mountainous, and are thus more sparsely inhabited.
Politically, the strongest nation on the planet is the Triarchy, and its bounds reach across the entirety of the largest continent. Smaller city-states across the oceans are its only rivals, but they do not hold a candle to the power or cultural influence of the Triarchy. The leaders of the Triarchy rule from the Capital and are the Triumvirate, a group of three Elders who rule for life - and thus, sometimes hundreds of years. Elder Gordia, Elder Cato, and Elder Seneca are the current leaders. Gordia has ruled the longest - two hundred and fifty-seven years - and is thus the most conservative of the three and the most entrenched in power. Cato is the most militaristic and is notable for being the only member of the Triumvirate in history for ruling as an Exception. Elder Seneca is an upstart by comparison, and his clan has been focused on academic and technological pursuits.
Technologically, Osmos V has not yet achieved interstellar flight, but it has advanced medicine, robotics, and plasma-based weaponry. This pales in comparison to the technology of the Reach, however, and their ability to advance the tech of Osmos V is one of the reasons the planet has a partnership with them in the first place.
Biologically, Osmosians as a race hold great genetic potential for powerful natural abilities that are considered superhuman. Baseline Osmosians are naturally stronger and more durable than baseline humans - somewhere comparable to MCU Captain America, if a bit more durable. They reach adulthood at the same rate but they may live to be hundreds of years old - those who reach full maturity grow horns on their foreheads. Additionally, Osmosians have the genetic potential for the Gift, an ability set that involves absorption of matter, energy, and the DNA of other creatures - this is Kevin's powerset from the Ben 10 franchise. Most Osmosians who develop powers develop the Gift, but some develop Exceptions instead of the Gift. Exceptions are where Osmosians have a lot of "power" diversity, a la mutant humans from the Ben 10 series (like Zombozo and his cronies). Exceptions are similar to mutants from the X-Men or quirks from My Hero Academia - some are powerful, some are weak, and some are disfiguring.
Culturally, Osmosians are a lot like traditional depictions of fantasy elves, insofar as they are typically stubborn for change and prone to be insular. Osmosians likely would have developed interstellar flight technology by this point if these mindsets were not prominent, for example. They venerate their ancestors with festivals and other popular rites, and family is incredibly important to them as one may have their closest relatives with them in their lives for hundreds of years. One of the potential downsides for the Gift is a predisposition to madness when someone absorbs energy, and much cultural teaching about the Gift stresses that absorbing energy is taboo.
Militarily, Osmosians typically utilize soldiers with useful Exceptions or the Gift, alongside technology to bolster mundane soldiers. Conflict is usually against other Osmosians, as they have yet to regularly interact with the greater cosmos. One historical conflict involved forces of the Triarchy clashing with a group of Thanagarians.
OSMOS V
March 29, 07:18 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
A month had passed since the alien debacle utterly and completely changed the course of my life. I had a greater picture of what kind of world Osmos was, and the dangerous greater universe that existed around it. And, more importantly to me, I had honest-to-goodness superpowers. Really good ones!
Now, if I could just figure out how they work.
What I'd done before had been instinctive. An accident, really, but a fortunate one to keep that tiger-like alien from ripping me to shreds. And despite the fact that I'd spent every waking moment of free time thinking about how to actively utilize it, I was making nearly no headway. It was almost completely meritless, except that I could feel an object when I touched it with my hands. The feeling was fleeting and difficult to reproduce consciously, but I could sense something within things that I touch that I could not feel before.
It was altogether goddamn frustrating. To be so close to something extraordinary, but unable to step closer and reach it, access it, learn it. I needed to ask someone about it, to get advice, but Mother had the Gift and had been categorically silent on the matter. I fought every urge to mouth off at her dismissive attitude, and I really felt like the petulant child she must believe me to be.
"Why are you being like this?"
Mother gripped the controls for the vehicle, eyes focused on the road.
I called this particular contraption the family station wagon, but it was not too dissimilar from a car, really, though driving it looked far more complex. A few years back, it had been a shock the first time Father switched the settings to a hover-mode, which allowed us passage across thicker, sandy dunes that had covered miles of the usual road pathway.
Mother had been nearly totally quiet for the entire trip, and I still did not know where we were going. Nor did I know why she was so cold.
"Mother, just tell me what's wrong."
The woman sighed and flipped a switch, forcing the vehicle to change into a higher gear. She answered without losing focus on her driving. "There is nothing wrong, Cassian."
My fingers balled into a tight fist. "And why should I believe that? I'm not stupid."
"I never said you were, son. That's the problem."
I looked away for a second, watching the sun preparing to set in the skies far above both of us. "It's not my fault that I pay attention to things. If you'd like, I can start pretending to not notice how no one trusts me."
They'd proven it on more than one occasion, and nothing had been the same between any of us since I uncovered Father's secret office shelter space. He'd been gone to the Capital for weeks now, and he claimed it was a business trip, but I know better. Whatever it is, he was doing something dangerous. I deserved to know about it, and who knows? Maybe there's something I can do to help. But they didn't trust me.
"Cassian," Mother began and then stopped herself, sighing. "Your Father and I want you to be exactly who you are."
"I don't buy that," I said without hesitation. "If you did, you'd be teaching me how the Gift works. You'd be-"
"No," she interrupted.
"No?" I asked. "Why? I've got powers. They're as natural to me as being blond."
Mother shook her head, exasperated. "This issue is complex, Cassian. It's not as simple as that."
"Then, when will it be less complicated? Before or after the next alien crash lands in our backyard? Or some lunatic attacks my school? Or I get mugged? Or I-"
She slowed the station wagon to a stop, and my words died in my throat. A cloud of dust from treads scraping against sand swirled up and obscured the view of outside for a moment. She watched the dust dissipate for a moment before she cleared her throat and met my gaze, her eyes intense.
"Cassian – having the Gift does not give you the right to use it for self-defense."
My eyes blinked in confusion.
"Do you kn-know what I mean? Self-defense is when you protect you-"
"I know what it means, Mother." I glanced away for a long second, remembering several arguments from my previous life about this topic. "You wouldn't want me to use the Gift in any of those if my life was in danger?"
Mother sighed. "I would want you to live. If you have no other means available, and no other options, then using the Gift would be appropriate."
… What?
"But the one thing I would always have in those scenarios are my powers." I clenched my fist and imagined it like stone or like glass.
"Perhaps," she admitted quietly. "But other options are available that should be your first impulse."
"Martial arts or hand-to-hand?" I thought back to the blaster weapon I found in Father's secret bunker of an office. "Or are you going to train me how to use a plasma blaster, then?"
She glared at me like I'd grown a second head. "Cassian, you're eight years old. It's far too early-"
"I almost died!"
"And whose fault is that?!"
…
This was unhealthy.
This was an unhealthy conversation for both sides of this damn argument.
"Mother, I already told you that they were going to go on their own, and that I wanted to keep an eye on them."
Mother shifted the vehicle into gear once more, eyes turned toward the road. "And I'll ask again: why do you think that it's your job to look out for other kids? You're younger than all three of them – you aren't responsible for their actions, Cassian, and you should have told an adult."
I can acknowledge her point. She wasn't wrong – in retrospect, telling someone else was absolutely the right thing to do. When I agreed to it, I thought it was just some stupid rock that had crashed. This I'd pointed out to her already, more than once, during the weeks that had followed. She was still emotionally in turmoil about the whole thing, and I could relate. It turned out to not be a stupid rock at all, and that meant what I did was probably the single stupidest thing I could have done.
And yet – had I not been there? I'm convinced that Adrius and Felixus would be dead. The elder brother had been paralyzed in fear, and the younger was generally too thick-headed to make good decisions. Maybe they'd have fled in time, maybe not, but I got them both moving in time and unintentionally tanked an attack that could have killed either of them, based on genetic lottery alone. Even if they were fortunate enough to have the Gift or to have an Exception, it might not have developed in that moment like it had for me. Manifestations for any Osmosian power were tied to moments of stress, but not all moments of stress are made equally for everyone.
"Look – you and I both know that you're right about that," I said, running my fingers along the leather-like armrest. "Hindsight alone says you were, and if I could live the moment over again, there are many things I would have done differently."
"Like tell an adult?"
"Sure." I won't tell her that an adult already knew. "But regardless of the event itself, it's over. I lived through it, and so did they. And now, I have these abilities that I don't understand. The same abilities you have, Mother, and you won't even talk to me about them. Not without shutting down or starting an argument."
She said nothing for a long few seconds, face resolute, and I fought the urge to scream.
"You're really going to do it again?" I asked as calmly and quietly as I could.
"Cassian, I'm not doing anything."
"Exactly! You aren't! You know how frustrating it is that my own Mother is not mature enough to teach me about a huge part of her life?"
Every second she took to consider what to say was another second that just infuriated me further.
"How many times have you seen me use the Gift?"
The question forced me to stop and think.
Until that day with the community theatre performance, I had never seen her use it. And… a handful of other times since?
"The Gift is not a huge part of my life," she finally says. "There is a reason for that, and when we get to the Capital, I'll show you why."
OSMOS V
March 30, 12:06 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
The Capital of the Triarchy was a magnificent city, larger than any I'd seen in my first or second life. I'd taken a trip to New York in fifth grade - it was larger than New York City and its five boroughs, and this mass of towering structures was only the Overcity. Beneath the Capital was a network of tunnels and chambers that housed citizens, businesses, and organizations alike. Descriptions from class always talked about how the Undercity was where a bulk of the people truly lived and worked, and that it became really crowded in times of danger.
The Capital's customs department checked our vehicle, their workers dressed in vibrant green robes. I was surprised at how varied some of them looked – a man with a horn like a rhino growing from his shoulder asked Mother a few questions, and I gave him a smile when he chose to spare me from the same questioning. It was one of the only benefits to being a child again. People tended to dismiss you and default to the adult around you, and I hated talking to official people in any capacity.
Mother readied the treads to move again, but she turned to the customs officer before she pulled away. "The receiver on this old thing is not working. Any news we should know about?"
The shoulder-horned man shrugged. "I don't pay much attention, unless it directly affects me."
That attitude always struck me as frustrating. How could you not care about the goings-on of your community?
"Are we expecting there to be news?"
"There's always news, Cassian. It's important to pay attention."
Mother drove us through the open gate and into the first district of the city. Cramped streets with various tourist-trap businesses lining either side encompassed much of the focus here, and the crowds moved about their day without a care in the world. I hoped that was true – that today was a perfectly normal day in the Capital, and that we weren't going to have to deal with some monumental moment.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" She reached with nervous fingers for something in another compartment and slid a piece of paper into my hand. In tight, Osmotin script, her handwriting read, "They are listening. Say nothing about your father or your aunt. Do not mention the alien to anyone except your Father or to me, and only when I tell you that it's safe."
I stared in utter bewilderment. With a hasty writing of my own pen, I scrawled in Osmotin, "Who are they?"
The station wagon pulled down a less busy street, a grimy atmosphere taking over the farther away we were from the city's gates. Muck, graffiti, and debris filled the designated areas for foot-traffic as well as vehicle movement. Smog choked the air around the city, and what efforts were there to make the city look appealing were becoming less effective. It was still incredible to see, and if the Overcity was this bad, I doubted that the Undercity was any better.
Mother pushed my arm and then gestured with a finger toward a holographic display floating above a whole city block. I recognized the three Elders of the Triumvirate, standing together in profile. Gordia looked ancient – wizened skin, prominent horns, and silvery hair that was tied in a tight bun, adorned with golden bands that matched the color of her robes. Cato was fierce in stature and build, his hair cropped short and his green clothing chosen to accentuate his body-builder-like physique. Seneca was nearly as muscular and far prettier, wearing tight blue robes that showed far more of his bare torso than I might have expected to see.
More concerning than that were the words in Osmotin below: "The Triumvirate wishes for you to Reach for the highest of peaks."
"Them?" I wrote carefully, and Mother tightly nods. "The Elders, the Reach, or both?"
Mother did not know.
OSMOS V
March 30, 14:46 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Aunt Jula was clearly a powerful business executive, just from the size of the towering building within one of the nicer districts of the Overcity. She worked for a highly successful robotics company, and she would be the equivalent of a vice president of marketing back on Earth. The amount of money she must bring home was staggering, and I was surprised that she shared with her brother – my Father – almost none of it.
The tall, robotic attendant escorted us to the elevator and took us to one of the upper floors to wait on a free moment, and we'd made it all the way into the innards of the building before we ever saw a living person. "You really must wait for another time. Mistress Jula is in the midst of a very important meeting."
Mother's lips were tight, and it was clear she hated the C3PO wannabe. "I'm sure that it will be fine. She will be expecting the two of us."
The robot tried to argue again, but Mother deftly avoided anything more specific and continued walking. I followed after, confused as to why this glorified secretary was allowing us through if it was such an imposition.
The elevator opened with a whir of sound, revealing the spartan interior of a high-tech office building, equipped with laboratories down each wing and overlooking a larger factory space below. Several men and women were busy with various factors of their job, utilizing robotic attendants to carry messages, brew beverages, or load heavy crates into storage containers. The din of the factory floor below filled the ambient noise of the office.
Mother walked as though she owned the place, ushering me along, until I finally spotted someone that I'd only ever seen in pictures. The dark-haired woman dressed modestly in flowing midnight blue robes that screamed wealth. She leaned over a table, while a team of workers presented a new kind of hook-armed drone to her. A trio of horns grew from her forehead and temples, showing her full maturity compared to her brother, as well as many of the staff present within the facility.
Mother loudly cleared her own throat, and Jula stiffened. "Lucrecia! Cassian! It is a pleasure to see you."
The robotic attendant trailing us interrupted, "Apologies, Mistress Jula. I tried to dissuade them, but they were very insistent."
Jula waved it off. "Not to worry. I am sure they will not be long."
My aunt dismissed the team and ended her meeting early, approaching us both. The robot finally returned to its post after another quick command. "I may have to request their security protocols to be reworked."
Mother said nothing to that.
With no further interruptions, Jula took the time to study us, eying me up and down for a long few seconds. Her face was difficult to read – was she actually happy to see us, to meet me? The woman was family, but I had heard plenty of mixed opinions over the years. And I suspected that the message Father exchanged with her about the Reach was not a great sign about the woman's character.
"I am surprised to see you without Horatio."
Mother grimaced. "I am surprised to see that you don't already know where he is."
My head whipped toward her so fast that I nearly strained my neck. I remembered Mother's warning, and I gripped onto her arm to show support, and to calm myself. Does Mother not know where Father is? Is he actually in danger?
Aunt Jula gravely frowned. "This is not a conversation for the public."
"I think it could be," Mother challenged. "If you want it to be private, then it best be truly private."
The emphasis on the word worried me more than anything else about the conversation. Father had truly gotten himself into trouble, and Mother dragged me all the way to the Capital with her on her quest to help him. I was grateful to be here and not stuck at home with a babysitter.
Once Jula brought us to a secluded office, Mother gestured around the room. "Is it safe?"
Jula considered the question with wide eyes. "Of course it is."
"You're certain that we are alone?"
"Get on with it," the businesswoman demanded. "Lucrecia, I must admit, I don't know what all of this is about. How long has it been since you heard from my brother?"
Mother began pacing throughout the room, and I found a quiet spot to watch these two women converse. The pressure of what this trip actually meant surged through me. I had hoped this was merely a vacation – that we were going to meet with Father to surprise him, spend some time with him while he was working, and then return home with or without him after a few days. Clearly, that was not the case.
"Nine days."
Jula gasped, and I swallowed. "Why haven't you-"
"I have reported it to the authorities," Mother explained, "but you and I both know that this is not the first time that I've had to do this. He turns up every time."
Father had a reputation with the authorities? Since when? All of this came down to that bunker, but what exactly it meant was unclear.
"Why?" I asked, interrupting before Jula can respond. "Has he gone missing before?"
Jula acknowledged me with a surprised blink. "Cassian, why don't you step outside? There should be snacks-"
"He can stay," Mother interrupted, before I could voice my own objection.
"But he-"
"He knows," Mother explained further. "Not the full extent of it, but he's more than capable of hearing about this."
What? Now she trusted me?
Jula considered me for a long time and then slowly nodded, clearly torn between two sides. "My brother has held some… interesting views about the Triarchy for most of his life. He can speak for himself as to why, but he's been involved with a group of radicals. Radicals are-"
"I know what that means."
Jula hesitated for a long moment and then huffed. "Smart little one, aren't you?"
I continued, not wanting to deflect the attention to me. "He was radicalized to do what, exactly?"
Mother leaned forward onto the empty office desk, running fingers across a metallic panel. "During the early years, the group, called Carnifex, was all about government corruption."
I tried to square that knowledge with what I knew, what I'd overheard, what I'd uncovered. Some pieces did fit, but he was some political activist? Or, more concerningly, a terrorist? He'd kept his politics to himself for most of my life, and even then, I'd only heard small snippets of his thoughts. A conversation with Grandfather came back to me, where they encouraged me to think critically about the government.
"Carnifex was good at what it did," Jula added. "Organized protests. Boycotted businesses. Stole shipments of resources. Brutalized Triarchy supporters." With each accusation, her tone grew in intensity. "The list goes on. Horatio worked with them for years, and I tried to pull him away from that life, from the violent bent that the group gained over time. He didn't listen, and we haven't been on good terms for nearly three decades."
I could not believe what I was hearing. I looked to Mother for confirmation, but it was clear that this wasn't a lie. Or at least, Jula's recollection was something close to the truth.
"Father hurt people?" I asked.
"He stayed with them until he met me." Mother met my gaze, a striking twinkle in her eyes. "I asked him the same questions. He swore he was not involved in any of the aggression. I agreed with him that the Triarchy had issues that needed solutions, but... hurting people isn't a choice I'd make. When I became pregnant with you, he left Carnifex and that life behind, to be a better father for you."
It was nice to hear that he stopped working with them after having me, but that was confusing. A terrorist group in one view, a freedom-fighting group in another. Which was right? The schools were not telling us to think critically about the Triarchy and its leaders. There could be all kinds of abuses going on that were hidden from the children, and for normal children, I'd consider that the right thing to do. I'm not a normal child, and I want to know exactly why the Triumvirate were so awful.
"Why tell me all this now?" I asked, trying to figure out where to go or what questions to ask. "I could have handled learning this earlier. Explains the bunker-"
"You found his bunker?" Jula asked, chuckling.
"Technically, the cleaning robot found it after I took apart the panel."
She snickered. "He hated that thing!" Her snicker grew into a cackle for a solid few seconds until Mother pacified her with a dark look. My aunt sheepishly looked down.
"We tell you this now because old contacts from Carnifex reached out to him, asked him to come back to the fold."
Jula turned a judgmental look toward both of us. "He didn't refuse this time."
I almost asked them what changed, and then I realized exactly the reason. "The Reach."
OSMOS V
March 30, 17:13 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Aunt Jula accompanied us inside, despite Mother's insistence that this was a family matter. Jula was family, I reminded her, and my aunt looked happy to see me defending her. She was all but a stranger, but I'd had several aunts and uncles in my first life who meant the world to me. If I could give her a chance, then maybe she would come around to mean something.
I was not sure exactly why we were in a rather small, overcrowded hospital, and the businesswoman stood out like a sore thumb compared to the working-class folk who stumbled into its walls. Hospitals here smelled a lot like they did on Earth, but the decor was black instead of a sterile white. There were as many robotic servants here as there would be custodial workers back home.
"Is Father here?" I asked, passing an open doorway where two apparent nurses tried to calm a man with severe burns across his chest, another nurse in the back of the room preparing fresh bandages. "I thought we didn't know where he was."
"Well, he could be here," Mother admitted, "and I'll ask if anyone's seen him. But we aren't here for him."
"Horatio wouldn't come here of all places," Jula said disdainfully. "This is barely better than the Undercity."
I ignored the woman, too caught up in the idea that Father might be in danger, might be wounded, to care about her pride.
"Jula, would you please?" Mother asked as she gestured toward a nursing station, where a bespectacled elderly woman with twin horns sat in an almost librarian pose.
"Can't you flash your credentials from your own hospital?" Jula challenged, but Mother shrugged.
The woman huffed and stalked over to the desk. Mother caught my attention with a tap of my shoulder. "You wanted answers about the Gift."
I frowned. "That – uh, that can wait. Father's in trouble."
Mother nodded solemnly. "My sister-in-law has many connections within the city, Cassian. We are waiting until we hear back from them about where to search, who to ask, and what to do next. We might have to leave the city in a hurry if we find him, so this is the only time. Until then, I want to show you this."
I admired her in that moment. She was holding together remarkably well, and I was not sure that I could do the same in her shoes.
A few minutes of waiting later, and we were standing outside a sealed door. A nurse at the station nearby pressed a button, and part of the door shifted away to reveal a wide viewing portal. Before we could approach to look closer, a man stepped over to the door, his green cloak and blaster revealing his status as a guard. He stood idle and gestured for us to approach, his eyes trained on mine for a long moment.
Inside a completely barren room with blank, stone walls, a single female figure lay prone on the ground. I could barely see anything, because the only light came from the hallway and through the viewing portal. I could just barely see her long, unkempt hair and feminine torso beneath a simplistic, dirty gown. Her features were gaunt, almost devoid of life. Whomever she was, she was starving and in clear distress.
I did not like looking at her like a zoo animal.
"Cassian, meet Luca of Clan Hermos." Mother poked the glass pane. "Luca was – and in some ways, is – my best friend. I consider her as close to me as a sister, even after all this time."
I could not look away from the scene. The slow rise and fall of the woman's chest was barely visible within the only source of light.
"What's wrong with her? She doesn't have a bed, or a quilt? It doesn't look like she's eaten in days."
Mother glanced away for a long moment, and Jula cleared her throat. "I didn't know her, but I can answer the last point. She's too far gone to eat regular meals – it would be… unsafe to do otherwise."
"Too far gone? To what?"
Mother kneeled down to speak on my level. "Son, this is what happens to those that abuse the Gift. Absorbing energy is one of the greatest dangers that our people face. Psychosis. Paranoia. Hallucinations. Aggression."
I'd heard of this – it was difficult to not hear of this, even if the curriculum students were provided at this age did not go into any real detail. It was one thing to hear kids like Adrius bragging about a family friend that he knew, once, that stuck his hand in a campfire and absorbed the whole thing without getting burned or, in his words, "losing his mind." It was another thing entirely to see it here.
"What did she do? How did she… wind up like that?"
"It's a long story, but she... she fell down a dark path. She's in one of the later stages. Too much of a danger to herself or others to be under anything but the most strict surveillance."
"They don't-" I pause, considering what my aunt said earlier. "They don't feed her regularly?"
"Keeps her weak, pliable," Jula explained coolly. "If you built up her strength, she could absorb the floor, the walls, or the ceiling and tear her way out of there."
I blinked, surprised. "Surely there's a better way to keep them-"
Mother pulled me away from the scene and toward the end of the hallway. Her eyes darted toward my aunt and then toward the guard standing outside Luca's room. "Remember what I said about safe, public conversations."
Oh.
I should be careful how I ask questions, when I ask questions, and to whom I ask questions. A critical question in front of a guard who may as well report directly to Elder Cato and his underlings?
The Triarchy was just an autocracy with two extra steps. And maybe a third, with powerful alien allies.
I wanted to find Father soon, if only to assist him in whatever way that I can to stop the them.
MUMBAI
March 31, 01:09 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
The moment the door closed behind her, the girl unraveled her clothing with shaking hands. Nervously, she tapped the door handle once to leave a nasty surprise if anyone came looking before she was ready. The window shades were open, a cool night-time breeze blowing strands of pink hair out of her eyes.
Monitors beeped and blinked with light in an otherwise darkened room, the overhead lights turned to their dimmest settings. It was plenty bright enough for a night visit, and she smacked the light switch on the panel to avoid it turning on automatically when she moved around too much inside.
The girl placed herself beside the bed, clambering onto a stool, and feeling that inherent connection to the world around her dull when her feet left the ground. She didn't need it for this.
Unless someone tried to take this moment away from her.
It had been years since she had seen her mother. Her real mother. Jinx studied, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, the woman lying prone, a ventilator strapped to the lower half of her face. Early wrinkles from too many cigarettes had developed, marring brown skin, and her time in the hospital had been long enough to take its toll on her overall complexion.
Jinx still thought the woman looked beautiful, even while hooked into these machines. Her mother had had many boyfriends, and she could remember a few of them before she entered foster care. Jinx still did not understand why she had had to leave in the first place, and the thought brings fresh tears to her eyes.
The girl did not know why her mother was in the hospital. Part of her wished that the woman had been a victim of the Appellaxian attack from the month prior, even if that didn't make much sense. The aliens had come from the skies, looking to take over everything, and some powerful people stepped in to save the world.
It was better to think that her birth mother had been attacked by something, than to believe what Jinx suspected was the culprit: drug use.
"Mātā," she began, face weeping. "Mātā, I am okay. You – you were right; I am scary. But I met some people, and they've been taking care of me. I've been taking care of them too, like you would do for people."
She considered Abhi and his friends – they'd been good to her, especially Fatima. "Because we've been helping each other, I haven't had to sleep on a bench once in years! Years! You'd be proud of me!"
The thought made her happy, and it was almost enough to dry her tears.
"Listen, when you get better, I'm going to buy you a house somewhere. A new car – or, even a palace! Yeah, and there'll be ponies in the backyard we can ride whenever we want. I can teach you how to talk to them, Mātā!"
Someone knocked on the door.
Someone outside screamed.
Jinx darted to her feet and gripped her mother's hand. "Listen, I can't stay any longer, but you get better!"
She shimmied over to the window and reached for the ground far below her. A vine crawled up the side of the building and expanded until it was thick enough to grasp, to hold her weight four stories off of the ground. She wrapped herself around it, just in time to see a group of nurses and doctors burst into the room.
"What is that?!"
"Her skin is gray!"
"Get down from there!"
"Nurse, get my hand some damn burn cream!"
With a thought and a swirling of her fingers, the vine began to descend of its own accord at a rapid pace, bringing her to the street level. At night, it was mostly empty, but she paid the hospital staff that shouted down at her from the window no mind. They wouldn't understand!
She covered her skin again and darted into a nearby alley, ready to slip back into the shadows.
Cassian is starting to learn dark truths about what his dad has been up to, not helped by the Reach having been busy on Osmos V. As for Jinx, it's nice she got to see her mother. Looks like the Appellaxian incident that formed the Justice League in this universe has taken place. The story is continuing to get interesting.
Cassian is starting to learn dark truths about what his dad has been up to, not helped by the Reach having been busy on Osmos V. As for Jinx, it's nice she got to see her mother. Looks like the Appellaxian incident that formed the Justice League in this universe has taken place. The story is continuing to get interesting.
Yeah - things are getting intense on all angles up in space, while our two future members of the trio deal with their own issues back on Earth. It's all coming around eventually.
OSMOS V
July 7, 09:57 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Aunt Jula's accommodations were the only saving grace throughout this entire extended stay in the Capital. The penthouse suite above one of the richest districts in the city practically ran itself, with no input needed. Robot butlers prepared meals, readied clothing, and removed trash. There were twenty-seven settings to use to bathe, including one that would automate even the basics of a shower for you. And, blissfully, air conditioning was working with peak performance in every room. I'd gone so long without it, having to live with desert heat even indoors, that it almost made me forget why we were there for a few blissful minutes.
"Felixus swears he saw the Scarlet Scarab!"
The small screen in front of me displayed an excited Adrius, the boy's face obscured with the usual video conference lag. It amazed me, sometimes, how incongruous the technology could be here. This suite had four robotic butlers alone, but they haven't improved upon a damn Facetime call?
Despite that annoyance, the potential meanings of Adrius' words were not lost on me, and every alarm bell in my head was ringing at once.
"Why would Xandros have anything to do with Sanitas?" I asked, assuming for the moment that Felixus was not lying. "The Reach have never cared about anything that remote."
At least, it didn't feel that way. There was only so much that I could uncover about their operations, and publicly, they looked like nothing but angels in the heavens. Maybe they… reached farther than I thought.
"I don't know," Adrius mumbled, before excitedly continuing, a glitching buzz flickering across the screen, "but seriously, he saw him! Armor and everything. He had these big maroon wings, and a jetpack, and he was flying fast across the desert. So fast and so low he whipped up a trail of sand behind him! My brother swears it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen, and I believe him!"
Adrius continued for several seconds in a hurried ramble, while my own mind could not help but stir at the prospect.
The Scarlet Scarab, for better or worse, had made several public appearances at the sites of natural disasters, criminal activity, and other events. A video I'd seen countless times over the years involved him saving dozens of people from a river near the coast when their boat crashed. Another popular clip involved him intervening in an armed conflict between two of the city-states outside of the Triarchy. He took every chance he could to speak in front of a camera - I'd heard several of his speeches over the years, praising our planet's partnership with the Reach and demonstrating what that supposed partnership could do. He was impressive.
And all of it screamed suspicious to me.
"Do you know if he stopped in town?"
Adrius stopped mid-sentence and frowned. "Well, no, but-"
"If he didn't stop in town, then there's nothing to worry about."
Incorrect, but I didn't want the brothers snooping on this. They were in enough trouble as it was.
"Worry?" the boy challenged. "Why would I worry?"
That's exactly the question they wanted everyone to ask.
"It's nothing – just, a feeling. You ever wonder when something is too good to be true?"
Adrius smiled in a way that only a little kid could. "Sometimes! Father tells me that Felixus and I are too good to be true, sometimes." He paused, and for a second, I wondered if he was going to apologize for bringing up his dad in front of me. "Well, when we aren't, uh, in a bunch of trouble."
I felt for the two of them, but I couldn't dwell on it any longer. They didn't suffer any injuries for my screw up, and my own had long since turned to fading bruises running down my arm.
I ended the connection a few minutes later, to spare Adrius more than anything else. Poor kid would be on restriction for months, and I'd hate to add another month to that if his father spotted him talking to me. I was to blame for their children, apparently.
Far too intrigued now, I turned to the monitor to continue researching the Scarlet Scarab. Researching the equivalent of the Internet on Osmos V had become easier, but it was still not as intuitive as search engines on Earth. It wasn't due to the language barrier anymore, but more to just the differences in technology. There was only so much research I could do on my own on a computer available to the publ-
Oh.
Jula's equipment in her office were bound to have some interesting tools.
OSMOS V
July 7, 14:23 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
"Still no word?"
My question hung in the air as I popped my head into her office, to find her behind her desk with a tool in hand. She ignored the question for several seconds, pulled a trigger, and sprayed a small amount of congealing fluid onto her latest project. The inner-workings of a robotic arm clenched and unclenched its fist so rapidly that the extension of its fingers nearly knocked over a desk lamp.
Finally, she pulled the tool away and shook her head, looking at me. "No. Carnifex are quiet."
I sat in her hastily offered chair across from her, uncomfortable netting pinching at my back. "You're sure he's involved with that group?"
"I'm fairly certain. My brother has had a tendency to get in over his head since we were kids," she admitted, eyes still trained on the project lying on her desk. "If I were a betting woman, I'd bet you take after him in that way."
Her tone was sly yet simple, and if I were actually my age, I wouldn't have noticed what she was implying. "I'd be excited to grow up to be half as good."
"Half as good will keep you safe," she said simply, without a hint of judgment. "Half as good will keep your family from wondering if you're gonna make it home."
Mind racing through implications, I leaped at the chance to ask. "You think he's not safe."
Mother, throughout these three months, kept up the mantra that he was in hiding with the rest of Carnifex. That something had gone awry, that they were in too dangerous waters to reach out to their family members. That they would be able to come home soon, once the heat died down. I'd long suspected that there were conversations taking place about where the three of us would go to lie low, once he came home, and that Sanitas was apparently one of those places.
Or at least, it was. With the Reach's potential interest, I was not so sure.
To hear that Jula was skeptical and unemotional? That surprised me.
She seemed to work through what I'd asked after several seconds and cleared her throat, her horns catching a glint in the light. "Cassian, I am sure that he'll be fine."
"How can you be so sure?" I pressed. "It's been months with nothing. Father works with a terrorist organ-"
"He's not a terrorist."
"I don't think he is either," I clarified, "but the Triarchy and the Reach would think so. It doesn't matter what we think."
Jula settled back in her chair and stared out the tinted windows, the beautifully cramped Overcity stretching all the way to the city's outskirt walls, designed to blunt the forces of oncoming sandstorms. I wondered what she was thinking, and compared to Mother, Aunt Jula kept everything close to the vest.
"Be honest with me," I continued, "how likely is it that he's dead?"
Her eyes widened, but she sputtered.
"How likely is it that he's in some maximum security prison?"
"Well, I don't-"
"How likely is it that he's tied to a chair while the Reach probe him?"
"Enough!" She finally shouted. Her face twisted into one of barely-constrained contempt. "Cassian, you've not the foggiest idea what is going on, so stay in your place-"
"No."
She blinked.
"Respectfully, no. It's been months. I'm not going to sit here with a thumb up my ass while my Father lies dead, imprisoned, or as some alien's lab experiment. I'm not just going to go play games in the corner and pretend like my life hasn't been completely upended."
"Your life has been upended?" Jula challenged, some mixture of amusement and anger contorted across her smile. "You think this ordeal has not upended my life completely? Horatio is my brother! His wife and child are now in my care. When I tell you to 'go play games in the corner,' you should jump at the chance. Drop the ungrateful attitude and remember where you are."
I was not about to let this moment slide.
"Oh no. A terrible situation asked you to be a good sister for once, and a good aunt for the first time ever," I poked. "I'm so sorry to have been so difficult to throw off your life."
Aunt Jula sputtered. "You- you have no idea how this has-"
"This place practically runs itself! You've barely had to lift a finger to accommodate two extra people. You live alone in this big house, and I'm starting to realize just why you and Father stopped talking. You're insufferable."
I stormed out of the office. She followed after me to the door, yelling for me to turn around, but I ignored her.
When I had learned that I had an estranged aunt years ago, it was difficult to not associate that with the family I had had in my first life, from Mom's side of the family. They were incredible people, and I had several aunts. I'd lost one of them, my favorite person in the entire world, to cancer at seventeen. While I sat in my too-hot bedroom in Sanitas and dreamed of home, of my real family, I wondered if Aunt Jula was anything like Aunt Connie. She had seemed so cool – a famous inventor and businesswoman in the largest city of this new world? Surely Father was wrong to cut her out of his life.
He had been right.
OSMOS V
July 7, 21:33 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
That night, I slipped into Jula's office. Her terminal stood in its usual spot atop her desk, and accessing it had been easy enough. One of the advantages of Osmotin in this regard is that its pictographic nature as a language made it easy for me to remember passwords I'd seen before, and I'd been in her office while she worked often enough that I'd spotted it.
The Osmotin word for 'brave.' I was not sure how to take that information, but it didn't jive with anything I knew about her.
I spent hours on the terminal, hoping to find something that would make this breach of trust worth it in the end. The robotic attendants powered down for the night, only turning on if you requested something of them, and I'd not have attempted this if they could report to her that I'd been in here. As it was, I had free reign to try this, so long as she stayed asleep and I didn't trip up over any other silent alarms.
The Scarlet Scarab. The Reach Ambassador. Carnifex. Horatio. The Triumvirate. Elder Seneca, Elder Gordia, Elder Cato. The Gift. Jula. Lucrecia. Cassian. Canine alien sightings. Feline alien sightings. Sanitas. The Capital.
I left no stone unturned, and it was surprising just how much more information this terminal could access. Jula's connections likely included some on the upper echelons of society, and I frankly wondered if she had some kind of security clearance – or the Osmosian equivalent of the idea. There were tons of sites with articles that involved countless subjects, far more than the simplistic wiki-crawls I'd been able to do before, and some of it seemed sensitive to me.
Several pieces of information stood out to me as potentially concerning, but it was difficult to tell which were real areas of concern and which were the equivalent of a UFO sighting report in a tabloid.
A man claimed a freak vine moved of its own accord and knocked down a supporting wall for his home, and then ran away before it could be analyzed. Suffice it to say that Osmos V had no such flora.
Xandros supposedly was on a diplomatic trip to one of the city-states far to the south, beyond the boundaries of the Triarchy. He could have easily passed Sanitas on the way, but there were other routes he could have taken, if I understood the map correctly. From what Adrius said, the armored man was flying fast, and he really could have just been in the area. I can't help but feel that nothing is that simple.
An anonymous poster supposedly from Carnifex claimed that they were going to assassinate Elder Gordia and even posted dates and specific plans. That date had long passed, and the woman was still alive and in charge. If this one were true, I feared that Father would be unreachable after an assassination attempt failed.
But the most concerning – because it seemed more probable - were a recent rash of disappearances across the Triarchy. Dozens of people – men, women, elderly, young – were missing without a trace, all within the last two years. There were hints that there were investigators looking into the pattern, and conflicting reports from different organizations across the country and beyond were looking into the source.
I was knee-deep in an article about a Carnifex-supported violent protest a few years ago, connected maybe to the missing people, when someone grabbed my arm and spun me around.
"What are you doing?" Mother hissed, her face half-shadowed from the light of the terminal and the darkened chamber.
"I was- I am trying to see what I can learn!"
"Son, this is ridiculous. Let's go-"
"Please, Mother! Aunt Jula's terminal has so much more information!"
"I'm sure that it does, but this is not your-"
I finally pull my hand away from her grasp. "If one more person tells me to stop trying to help save my own Father, I'll… I'll run to the officials and fucking ask them directly."
That was not much of a threat, because Mother had already tried that and learned next to nothing.
Steaming with anger, I continued. "You're just like her. You don't want me doing anything. You aren't even doing anythin-"
Her hand grasped my shoulder so quickly that it cut off my train of thought, her grip painful. "Cassian, you don't have any…"
Her voice broke, and the next thing I knew, she hugged me. Tears rolled down the back of my neck, and I accepted the slight pain of her tight embrace. I leaned into it, grateful for the contact, and rubbed her back slightly. The tension in her muscles was clear as day, and I… I wasn't helping.
I was merely adding to the stress of an already horrific situation.
God damn it.
"I'm sorry."
She didn't let go and continued to sob. "Don't be sorry. I am sorry."
Mother turned to the computer terminal and hesitated, almost amused. "What do you think you've found?"
I smiled, too eager to show her to care about her almost dismissive expression. I'd prove to her this was real, or that this had potential.
OSMOS V
July 7, 23:07 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
The man stepped from a sand-blasted alley and into the busy streets of one of the largest cities he'd ever seen. Carefully, he adjusted the jacket he'd just stolen, stretching its slightly ill fit. It wasn't the most difficult disguise he'd ever had to wear, but he was grateful that he hadn't had to wear a synthetic skin or elaborate contacts or a full-body cast.
After all, most of the people throughout the tightly-packed streets were roughly the same height, the same build, and had many of the same physical features as he did naturally. Compared to his last assignment, it was far easier physically to ingratiate himself into the population of Osmos V, and he suspected that was largely the reason he'd been called for this mission.
The parameters were clear enough to understand. He had a very task-oriented mind. It was often best, for him, to take every infiltration mission one step at a time. Considering the implications of what might be happening on this planet behind the scenes, if he tried to do too much too quickly, he could easily fail to gain useful intelligence before he was uncovered.
So, he started small: investigate the disappearances of several individuals across Osmos V's primary world power and uncover what, if any, connections they may have to the Reach. Depending on how things unravel, the situation could get incredibly messy incredibly quickly, on a political scale that far outweighs the planetary politics of Osmos V.
He settled into an Overcity bar, ordering a drink that would overpower a simple human body. He sipped it to keep up appearances until his potential mark arrived, and even the taste of it was overbearing. He knew how to hide his reactions, maintaining neutrality, while he studied the patrons of the bar.
The translator implant behind his ear worked overtime to filter even the small background chatter into English. He would have to be careful whom he talked to – he'd spent weeks aboard the ship studying Osmotin as a language to become fluent but the translator would carry much of the weight during his time here.
These were the usual conversations that people have, even back on Earth. The names were different, the customs were different, but people are people. Men and women discussed their relationships, they discussed their careers, and they discussed current events. Those conversations were always the most enlightening for a man in his profession, so he turned his focus on them.
"Why here?"
He glanced upward to the bartender, a pretty redhead with horns jutting from her head, indicating that she was likely four times as old as he was, but looked no older than twenty-five. She smirked as they made eye contact.
"Just missing my son. Decided to drink away my sorrows before I meet a friend."
The woman eyed him, ignoring someone down at the other end of the counter asking for a drink. Her coworker shot her an annoyed look and then went to get the order.
"Why do you miss him? Handsome thing like you separated from his unlucky mother?"
The man played along and showed some of his genuine remorse. "A little of that. Job forced me to travel abroad, and I might be away from him for a long time."
The bartender reached over to try to place a comforting hand on his. He pulled his hand away, knowing humans were noticeably warmer than Osmosians.
"You have my sympathies. Anything I can do to make you feel better tonight? A stronger drink perhaps?"
If he tried any stronger, even the small sips he had made might strip his stomach lining.
"No, thank you."
The bartender shrugged. "Suit yourself. If you need anything else, just ask for Lushila. Your name?"
"Just Gabriel."
The bartender returned to her post, and Gabriel returned to his own. A tap of his earlobe ensured the translator was recording everything for study later, and he continued to wait for the real purpose of his stay to arrive.
A near half-hour passed, putting the time well after midnight, before he finally spotted his target. An elderly Osmosian entered the establishment alone, and from the shape and length of the horns, Gabriel knew he was much older than even the bartender. The man's appearance matched what information he had, and Gabriel stood from the chair to greet him.
The man's exhaustion was clear on his face and in his gait, and he looked even older than he really was. In his arms were a stack of familiar pamphlets.
"Maximus," the human offered as he approached, surprising the elderly Osmosian. "I apologize for interrupting your evening, but I am certain that if you listen to what I have to say, you will be grateful you took the time to speak to me."
"Who are you?"
Gabriel introduced himself by name and then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled a pamphlet he'd taken from the street earlier that day, one with information about a missing man. "Someone with information about the whereabouts of your son, Horatio."
The pamphlets under the elderly man's arms scattered across the ground.
OSMOS V
July 8, 05:12 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
I was under no illusions that I was safe.
A potentially hostile alien power with technology that vastly outstripped our planet's own resources was working with the government of the most powerful country in the world. Even if they were actually allies now, the tentative alliance between them was only one mistake on either side from turning into all-out war. The cultural, political, religious, and technological differences between the two cultures were likely too different from one another for true partnership to exist long-term.
The situation reminded me of arguments against a Middle Eastern refugee crisis from my first life, but the Reach were not simple Osmosian refugees from an Osmosian cultural background. There was no shared sense of identity as the same people between us. Many of the hallmarks of what makes us us were exceedingly different.
The Reach evolved physically with the conditions of their planet. I'd studied some of the information they made public about their physiology, and they were closer to Earth insects than Earth mammals. They had roughly humanoid shapes and shared some similar features, such as limbs or eyes, but their version of skin was a thin layer of cells atop a thick layer of exoskeleton. What musculature they possessed was not at all similar to an Osmosian or even a human, and, worryingly, they laid eggs to procreate. The idea of a human-shaped thing laying eggs terrified me, and I failed to not wonder about the winged human aliens that once warred with the Triarchy.
The Reach developed culturally with the conditions of their planet. As far as I can tell, the Reach had kept mostly quiet about the political landscape of their home planet. They were similar to us in that they had a kind of ruling council, but one that valued science, progress, and it sounded exactly like the kind of thing that I'd tell my new neighbors about my home country if I were trying to keep them in my good graces. They spoke little of religion – something that was not particularly popular on Osmos V either, but it existed – and they claimed they valued education above all else. There was talk that envoys would be coming to teach children who entered schooling about the Reach language, something that was still a mystery to all but the most expert linguists. Part of me wondered why I couldn't be reborn into a universe where everyone conveniently spoke English.
The Reach developed technologically with the conditions of their planet, and whatever those conditions were, they'd far outstripped the demands of Osmos V. They'd shared some of that tech so prolifically that it had even reached remote areas like Sanitas, and from what I can tell, Reach devices were in the hands of people throughout the Capital. Powerful sensors on vehicles to make them safer to drive. Better generators to increase efficiency to the power grid. Enhancements in robotic tech to increase longevity before obsolescence. It was the latter that worried me, considering where my Mother and I were staying. I had never been a tech-head on Earth, but I couldn't tell if Jula's company were using Reach products in their designs or not. I'd been increasingly careful with what I said around them, then, just in case.
No – I knew that it was only a matter of time before this alliance exploded into violence. We were too different, ultimately, to work together for long. All of what they represented was too good to be true, and I feared for the safety of the little folks. The Triarchs had practically invited them, and there was no doubt in my mind that the wealthy elite had vested interest in continuing the partnership. Would the ones with the resources to actually stand up and fight be ready to do so when the time came, or would they roll over in the hopes that they kept getting more and more out of the aliens like goddamn parasites?
So, while I waited for information on Father, I prepared.
I had a few bug-out bags ready if the bugs attack. Nonperishable foods, containers of water, a handheld purifier, the equivalent of a battery-pack, and a firestarter. Several copies of printed maps with marked routes out of the city that would, hopefully, not be packed when the time came for any kind of mass evacuation. A canister of fuel that could, in an emergency, be enough to get a vehicle moving if we managed to scavenge one. A small offline robot drone that could act as a guide, one that predated any potential Reach tech additives and had been sitting in one of Jula's private closets. I still had some distrust of it, but I'd confirm with my aunt if and when the time came.
The only things I really felt I was missing were weapons. I'd placed a lightweight metal rod roughly the length of a baseball bat in each bag, and they could serve as clubs in a pinch. It wasn't a blaster, and that worried me. I'd searched through the apartment for any potential gun safes or lockers, but Jula had none. She lived alone in the most crime-filled city this side of the continent, and she seemingly had no form of self-defense. Back on Earth, I'd lived like her with the assumption that I didn't need one, but there was nothing like a potential alien invasion apocalypse to change my mind.
I told no one about the bags, not even Mother. Since our conversation the other night, she was seemingly looking at the world with fresh, suspicious eyes. I think I'd really gotten through to her, at least to prove that paying any damn attention to what her son was saying or doing had value. I knew that I was pressuring her too much, and one day, I'd apologize. For now, I was just grateful that she was giving me a chance.
During the stay in the Capital, I did not neglect the Gift. Each night, even after Mother showed me her best friend's condition, I practiced. As far as I was concerned, not developing it was tantamount to suicide. In the event of a brewing war within the next few weeks, months, or years, I knew that I would need to foster this ability in order to survive. Everyone with any additional abilities would be called to use them to defend their loved ones, and I wasn't going to fight the Reach with one limb tied behind my back.
I had no teacher. Mother was understandably concerned about the Gift, but she had been far too worried about Father to focus on showing me the pitfalls. I used what resources I could gather online, with potential guides others had created, and the whole process was amusing to see. If it were so easy for people on Earth to gain powers as prolific as they were on Osmos V, there would be countless how-to video essays on YouTube. Most I had found were based in text, and what few videos existed were hardly illustrative of the inner-workings of the mind.
I pulled an effective guide I'd uncovered, one so effective that they'd been banned within some areas of the Triarchy. Manifest Your Mutability: On Accessing the Varied Potential of the Gift. I'd read one particular passage so often that it had become almost a mantra, and it had become particularly easy to remember once I'd translated it into a hidden notebook in English.
"Your DNA contains the instructions for how to adapt. As such, each cell of your body knows how to change its structure. Each tissue of your flesh awaits mutation. These instructions initially consist of subconscious processes, but with a dedicated mind, they can become consciously activated and consciously controlled. Dedicated practitioners of the Gift can adapt their bodies to mimic any environmental condition – living matter, nonliving matter."
Conspicuously missing from this author's passage were the abilities we possessed to absorb energy. Throughout what excerpts of this complex text I'd translated, there was not one mention of energy absorption as a feature of the Gift. Perhaps it was a flaw in my translation or I was seeing things that were not really there, but I could tell that certain segments had been edited out of the document. Whomever had done it had not done it cleanly, and context that should mention the ability was still present, and it was all but alluded to directly.
I understood the reasons for censorship, especially with something of this magnitude for abuse. Mother had shown me where it led, and I had no personal desire to lose my sanity on the same slippery slope. From everything I had read and everything that I had seen, a Gifted Osmosian who stuck to absorbing matter was a powerhouse on any battlefield. In a potential war with the Reach, a hundred soldiers who can become as strong as stone, as durable as steel, as hard as diamond? Surely the bugs would be hard-pressed to stop us.
But I couldn't bank on that. Could the future of Osmos V bank on its Gifted soldiers using matter only either?
I renewed my efforts to test the Gift, utilizing its safer pastures. The right mindset was difficult to perform, but my cells knew what to do. I'd absorbed stone during the fight with that alien, completely without thought. The book suggested ways to compensate, and throughout these past weeks, it had been difficult to gain any significant progress.
But I had made progress.
My palm had become tin. My wrist had become copper. My fingertips had become glass. Not all at the same time, but I had done it. The real trick would be to take that effort and make it faster, make it last longer, and make it cover more of myself. I'd feel more comfortable in my chances against the Reach if I could manage even a forearm of more durable material. Something like Greed's armor from Fullmetal Alchemist, without even the full body, would be an ideal place to start.
At any rate, I'd feel safer with ready access to the Gift.
OSMOS V
July 8, 14:01 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
I released the hold on the doorframe and allowed the mimicked state to fade, my fingers becoming flesh and blood. A second later, I pushed open the bedroom door to see, exactly, why everyone in my house had suddenly started shouting. I couldn't tell if it was out of fear, excitement, worry, or something else, and part of me was afraid to look outside the nearest window for fear of seeing the Reach glass the city.
Grandfather paced quickly back and forth, while Mother frantically cried in apparent shock, a hand firmly clasped over her smile. "- akthrough, yet we don't know for certain if this man will be-"
"We can find my husband!"
"Mother?" I pleaded, rushing over to meet them in the living room. Aunt Jula sat somewhere behind her father, gripping the side of the kitchen table so tightly that her knuckles glinted in the light above. "Good news?"
Finding my Father could mean lots of things. It could mean that he was safe, in hiding, and that he would be coming home soon. It could mean that he was not safe, in hiding, and that he needed rescue. It could mean that he was dead, gone, and that we would have closure. Any of that could be good news, if you looked at it through the right lens.
"Cassian!" Mother shouted as she rushed forward, gleeful, grasping onto my shoulders with gusto. The excitement was electric, and I matched her energy quickly. "We have a lead! Tell him, Maximus!"
Grandfather looked uncertainly at me for a moment and then cleared his throat. "Last night, a young man named Gabriel approached me. He's an investigator, and he claims that he's noticed a pattern of people who wind up missing."
My eyes widened and meet Mother's gaze, her face filled with pride.
"My boy's a genius!"
My ears burned at that comment. A guilt I thought I'd vaulted over remained in the pit of my stomach, and I wondered if Mother and Father would prefer a normal eight year old kid. They'd be just as stressful to raise, but for different reasons and without the worry, conscious or not, that their son was lying to them every minute of every day by not explaining the truth. I wasn't a genius.
"Gabriel is investigating the connection that the missing people have, and he says he's close to figuring out what that connection is. It's why he approached me – he's contacting family and friends of the missing to uncover what kind of person that the missing are. To see any commonalities."
Aunt Jula tapped her fingers loudly on the table. "Does he know how or why they've disappeared?"
Grandfather did not know how to answer that. "He's looking into it. Once he knows the connection, figuring out the reasons why will be easie-"
"Where is Father?"
A long pause sucks the air and excitement from the room.
"He doesn't know, Cassian, but he's the best lead we have."
"I wanna meet him, to help him!"
Jula scoffed far too loudly, earning a sharp glare from Mother. "I'm sure there are ways you can help, son. This is great news!"
The first forward momentum in months of nothing. How could this be anything but great news?
OSMOS V
July 29, 19:08 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
When Gabriel walked through the door of one of Jula's private conference rooms, I almost fainted. There was something unmistakably familiar about him, and the longer I looked, the more certain of it that I was. Frustratingly, I could say nothing in the moment, because no one in my family would goddamn understand.
The investigator placed a black canvas bag atop the table and gestured to the open windows. "Before we get started, close them please."
Mother, with fingers shaking and full of hope, pulled the curtains tight until only light from the fixture above remained. "Thank you for coming! Have you learned anything new since you spoke to my father-in-law?"
Gabriel hesitated, his eyes fixated on her and then me, but he did not form the question he must have possessed for me to be here. "Ma'am, there is much to discuss. I understand asking you to be patient is difficult, given the circumstances, but please, if you would?"
The accent…?!
"I apologize," she finally said. "You just have to realize that I am-"
"I understand completely," he assured us. "I can promise you that, if I were in your shoes, I would be fighting tooth and nail to get my family back."
Tooth and nail.
Huh.
Something about the way he said that only confirmed exactly what I was thinking already. It sounded off in Osmotin, using the wrong words for the idiom.
"I am going to show you some of the data I have collected from other conversations I have had and visits I have conducted," Gabriel explained carefully. "Before I do, you must promise that nothing I say here leaves this room, without my permission." The intensity of his eyes could bore a hole into my head. "Am I understood?"
Each of us agreed swiftly – anything to get Father back. He signaled to Grandfather, who turned out the lights. For a moment, the room is in near complete darkness. Mother grasped onto the back of my hand, fingers wrapping around mine, on instinct. I return the gesture, my nervous toe-tapping audible in the silence of that moment.
Gabriel activates something from his bag, and the room alights with green light. A hologram flickers over the table, in shades of dark green and black, detailing information in text, video, and images. It was difficult to parse what was important to read and what was not, or what images were the most useful to view and what were not.
"What you see here is the sum total of what I've uncovered about this issue."
Jula's eyes were aglow as she studied it carefully. "What publication did you say you were with?"
"I didn't," he dodged. "I have visited three of the sites where missing individuals were last seen." At his words, the hologram shifts in focus until a looping video began to play, of what may as well be body-cam footage of Gabriel walking through the desert, filtering through the dunes for details. "Given the conditions of the desert sands, I was unable locate much physical evidence that might be from the missing, apart from strands of fabric consistent with clothing." An image highlighted and expanded, showing a twisted thread stained in something dark. "On exactly one strand, I found signs of blood."
Was this guy a forensic investigator?
"Did it match any of the missing?" asked Grandfather.
A different image became the focus of the hologram. The picture displayed two images that were similar in shape but were unmistakable to what I remembered of DNA models.
"My tools are limited, unfortunately, but from what they could tell me? The blood wasn't Osmosian."
My mind whirled with activity, jumping to several potential conclusions at once. From the intense looks of everyone else in the room, they had followed similar patterns of thought. "Was it Reach?" I jumped to ask.
Gabriel waved a finger through the hologram, and it shifted to show an image of the Reach Ambassador. "The blood did not match anything in my limited databases, which include samples from the Reach and common wildlife on Osmos V. It's not foolproof, but…"
Oh.
"A different alien, then? Something brought in from the Flux?" Jula suggested. "I find that hard to believe when there are already other aliens in our midst. Father, how did you manage to find someone who sounds crazier than Horatio?"
Grandfather moved to argue, but Mother gripped my hand more tightly, impressing a message of realization upon me. I met her eyes, and she jerked her head toward the door. "We'll be back in a moment." Wiping tears from her cheeks, she escorted me to the hallway and closed the door tightly, then stepped away several yards and out of earshot.
"The alien attack!" I muttered, remembering the freak of nature cross between a canine and a feline that attacked me. I still had a small scar on my arm from the deepest of the cuts that did not heal properly.
"Yes," she answered carefully.
"Let's tell him!"
Mother frowned. "We can't just tell him. We don't know him, Cassian."
"He needs to know what I saw, what I lived through!" I argued. "We have to trust someone. He's our first and only shot at finding Father. If we don't open up to him, we'll miss our chance to find real answers."
After a long, pregnant moment, Mother finally relented. "Only speak to him when he asks you a question directly. A few months ago, and I wouldn't be allowing you to be party to this conversation at all."
"A few months ago, we'd be with Father in Sanitas, and none of this would even be happening."
I could not tell her why I truly already trusted him. She would not understand what the man and I shared, and why we could get along far better than the Reach and Osmos V ever could.
Same. I've read enough fanfiction to speculate and compare what might happen but I'm consistently thrown off. Like I'm expecting him to arrive on Earth but I have no clue what the context of such a trip will be.
Same. I've read enough fanfiction to speculate and compare what might happen but I'm consistently thrown off. Like I'm expecting him to arrive on Earth but I have no clue what the context of such a trip will be.
It would have been far easier to just hit the skip button and jump straight to Earth, as other stories might have done. I am thoroughly enjoying where this is all heading, and I'm glad to hear that I'm doing something unconventional. Hope to stick the landing!
It would have been far easier to just hit the skip button and jump straight to Earth, as other stories might have done. I am thoroughly enjoying where this is all heading, and I'm glad to hear that I'm doing something unconventional. Hope to stick the landing!
OSMOS V
August 03, 12:16 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
I had yet to get a chance to be alone with Gabriel. I could not blame my family at all for trying to isolate a small child from a stranger. Even if he turned out to be a hundred percent legit and was the one man who would lead Father to salvation, trying to keep him from interacting with the kid was a smart move.
It was annoying in so many ways, but I would not let it hold me back forever. I wouldn't be passive in this, but I had to do it the right way.
The past few days have been a whirlwind, both internally and externally. While the family prepared a trip with Gabriel to the site outside of Sanitas where I encountered the alien, I could not help but contemplate exactly what it would mean for Gabriel to be here, now, and what I already knew of him.
He was unmistakeably human in physical appearance. Osmosians and humans were not too different from one another during our earlier years of life, but even at only eight, I was physically different in one major way: thickened ridges around the eyes, the skin so dark they appear almost pitch black. An average Osmosian man would have these markings, but it varied rarely. No one likely thought anything of it the way that I did, but that sense of uncanny valley did not activate when I looked at him.
The man had a Southern accent – Texan perhaps. Accents were a funny thing to contemplate on Osmos V. There were linguistic differences between my family and those of the Capital, and video or audio broadcasts often held different ways of speaking that were unique to hear and not dissimilar to accents on Earth. But a Southern U.S. accent? I was originally from the South! I hadn't heard anyone on Osmos V speak the way that I used to, and it made perfect sense.
His name was Gabriel, which is a different enough name than most I'd heard on Osmos V. For reasons that trouble me, many of the names of people living now and of ancient figures from history books were almost Latin in origin, or perhaps followed some Roman conventions. Horatio, Lucrecia, Maximus, Jula, Cassian -the list goes on and on. If I remembered correctly, the Triarchs themselves held similar names to figures from Earth's Roman history: Seneca, Gordia, and Cato. I was not sure what to make of it, and I suspected there may be some actual historical connections between the two planets. Or there was something else going on that was much larger than that, and more difficult to philosophically wrap my head around.
I suspected it was the latter. The sheer statistical anomaly it must be for a human to meet me on an alien planet that might be millions of light-years away? That was not a coincidence, and it flew in the face of my belief in a deterministic universe.
Added together, Gabriel's existence heavily implied a few things that I was certain were true, even without talking to the man further.
1. Earth existed.
2. Earth had humans.
3. Earth was in at least the modern era, and likely far beyond it.
4. Earth had interstellar technology.
5. Earth sends humans to space to get involved in the affairs of other planets.
If Gabriel had a ship that could get me to Earth, I could live out the rest of my days in a place that was truly home. I could not help but feel giddy at the thought.
I had spent hours contemplating exactly how I would approach him, how I would ask him, until finally, I settled on writing an explanation and delivering it to the man in secret at the first opportunity. It would be a simple note, written in English, that would no doubt catch his attention. If all else fails, he might be a confidante during these tumultuous times, and I could rely on him to listen to my story.
If someone else found it, I'd play it off as a message in code or perhaps as a made-up language. I had thoroughly-cemented a reputation among my family as an exceptionally weird kid – they may actually accept that as enough.
When Gabriel approached the family again, the blue-eyed brunette was geared up for a long trek to Sanitas, and I'd packed carefully. We were not staying long – it was far more likely to all of us that Father was somewhere near the Capital. Our family packed light, and so did he, throwing a simple bag around his shoulder and another into the back of the vehicle alongside the rest of what we'd deigned to bring.
I didn't tell anyone I'd done it, but the night before he was supposed to meet up with us to leave, I placed a bug-out bag among the provisions we were bringing, just in case.
"Thank you for agreeing to take us," I said truthfully.
The man stared for a long moment at my mother, who gripped onto my shoulder tighter. "Truth be told, you might have more of an idea of what we're looking for than I do, kid. This was not where I expected the investigation would take me." His Osmotin was still strange – I'd inwardly applied the context that was missing, but it was more confirmation that he was not from around here.
"We're just grateful you're still including us," Mother added. "You could have taken our information and left to see it yourself."
Grandfather stepped forward in acknowledgement of her words. "Did you hear anything more from other houses?"
We were not the only families from the area of the Capital with missing family or friends, and he'd spent the last several days investigating them until the day of our trip. I suspected that, unless he finds exactly what he was looking for with us, he'd move on to even more on the list of recently missing that fit the bill.
The man – a human man, my brain excitedly reminded me – nodded only slightly. "I will debrief you all on the road. Is Madam Jula coming with us?"
Maximus shook his head. "She could not get away from work."
Jula's company were launching a product this week, and she was the spearhead of its design. I didn't blame her for wanting to see it through, but it still bugged me that she wasn't willing to step away long enough to come with us. This was her brother!
"A shame, but I understand." Gabriel paused for several seconds, his eyes sweeping over each of us and then settling on me for even longer. "Lucrecia, your son is coming?"
My throat tightened with nerves. Mother moved to speak, but I cut her off as I regained my nerve. "I, uh, am the only one who knows the direction to the crash site."
It was a hail Mary to keep myself involved.
Mother was resolute in her clear discomfort at my presence and the continued annoyance at that fact. "It's not too late to tell us, Cassian. Jula will ensure you're safe until we get back."
The day after the attack, I'd explained to Father exactly where the ship had crashed, where the alien had attacked. I was so heavily medicated during that first week to fight off an infection that I'd spilled the beans to him, and I could barely remember what he did as a response. Mother had not heard the explanation, at least from me, and Father did not speak of it again. A few weeks later, and he left for business in the Capital, something at the time I had not suspected was strange. Had Carnifex done something with the information about this alien crash?
Suffice it to say, Mother was not happy with me that I had yet to tell her. And, truth be told, I was glad that I hadn't. It was the leverage I needed to be included in whatever this mess was.
"I could not miss the chance to do something, Mother."
OSMOS V
August 03, 14:52 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Jula grabbed the make-up stylus from the assistant and hastily began applying the enhancer to make her eyes pop for the cameras. "You're not remotely useful. First time?"
"No ma'am, I have been-"
"I'm sorry, but I don't care," she finished quickly. The mousy-haired assistant, likely decades her junior, forlornly disappeared amid the throng of other assistants and technicians. Part of her felt guilty about that, but it was only a small part. She allowed others to sweep into the scene and assist her in other ways, to prepare for her big moment.
"Jula!"
Someone she hadn't seen before pushed through the crowd, a man with an unfortunate pattern of horn growth that led to only a single horn that was so long it curved over the top of his head. From the looks of his clothing, she knew exactly why he was here, and she cursed as she tossed the stylus haphazardly onto a nearby table. A technician hastily apologized to her like it was his fault that it had fallen.
She cupped her hand over her mouth and shouted, "Security! It was made very clear that there was to be no press before the announcement!"
Three chrome robotic guards marched in lock-step behind a pair of guards dressed in similar coloring. The journalist blanched as he spotted their hasty approach, black batons in hand and ready to apprehend the stranger if he should try something dangerous. "Please, Madam, it will only be a moment-"
"Save your questions for after the announcement, as was arranged prior."
Stymied, the journalist left before the guards could properly escort him out of the staging area. She felt the stress of the moment relax her shoulders only slightly. The words of her superiors rang through her head, reminding her that the success or failure of this product relied on her, in this presentation. It was to be broadcast throughout the Triarchy, and if people did not know her name before today, they had a chance to learn it soon.
When the time was right and all of the parameters were set, she stepped onto the stage. Clouded sunlight descended overhead, and a brisk wind brought some comfort to the heat, clearing away the sweat forming on her brow. Awnings for the crowd caught the brunt of the climate, providing additional shade, and shadows from some of the taller buildings of the Overcity covered the public area. A line of guards and hastily assembled barriers of metal protected her – and the new product – from the assembled crowd, a mixture of press and potential customers.
"Welcome, one and all. I am Jula, vice president of technological development for Vir Actus. For four decades, I have weathered the highs and lows of this business, and I can guarantee after today, that all you will see is success."
Cameras caught her prepared speech, and she continued the address, unabated. Assistants and interns brought out the prototype, nearly ready for market, and she marveled at the creation she had largely developed single-handedly. Her team had helped in their own small ways, and she thanked each and every one of them publicly, before she launched into a demonstration.
Placing her hand carefully into its outstretched palm, automated processes began within the device's programming. Code turned to movement, movement turned to brilliance, brilliance turned to profit. Within a few short seconds, a metallic layer of blue plates covered her entire arm, fingers to shoulder. It flexed with her knuckles, it shifted with her palm, it bent with her elbow, it swayed with her forearm. A string of stylish lights flickered with each movement, designed to indicate the mechanical output of energy.
"This product, as you can imagine, has many potential applications within many fields of life for our people. It can act as prosthesis, it can act as a weapon, it can act as an invaluable tool for construction, it can carry your groceries… the list goes on."
She continued her prepared presentation, demonstrating the additional lifting strength, the potential durability, its waterproof design, its resistance to heat, its reactions to voice commands, its viability for eventual direct integration into the nervous system.
"The product will hit the shelves-"
The crowd exploded into noise, and for a moment, she prepared to tell them to be quiet and save their questions.
But they weren't shouting for her.
They were shouting for him.
With a rush of air, the scarlet armored Triarch diplomat to our alien partners waved to the crowd as he landed. Xandros stood beside her, smelling of fuel, as the wings of his suit melted away into panels along his back. His footsteps were surprisingly silent, Jula realized, and she pondered how they managed to make such an impressively adaptable suit of power armor so light.
Armor far beyond what she had achieved with this prototype, tentatively titled on internal documents as "Automail."
"Scarlet Scarab, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
The helmet similarly melted away, revealing the handsome face of the Osmosian who represented our interests to the Reach. Jula had no idea why this man was here – this was not part of the plan, this was not part of any discussion the company had, and this was not how she expected to interact with anything of the Reach for the first time.
"You've made an impressive tool. An invention worthy of praise!"
The crowd lit up, and Jula couldn't remember a time when she felt more confused.
"Thank you. That, uh, means a lot, coming from you."
She could not wrap her brain around what, exactly, he was doing here. At a product launch announcement for something that could, one day, develop into powered armor, a man with far better technology interrupts it? Why was Xandros trying to upstage their company's efforts?
"I apologize for the unprompted entry, Madam Jula, but I must take advantage of your broadcast for an urgent message."
She shared a look with the acting producers of the announcement for guidance, and they were clearly fuming. She considered what her father would say and did not move away from the podium. "Diplomat, sir, we are in the middle of somethin-"
He ignored her. "I have important news to share from our partners from beyond the stars. The Reach ship's sensors have detected an influx of violent alien attackers from across the cosmos."
Jula's heart stammered in her chest.
"They have landed in pods only large enough for a single individual assailant, and they threaten any and all that they find in the area upon arrival. I, myself, have intervened in the most recently detected landing and have apprehended the alien before it could do harm to others."
The crowd was not complacent upon hearing that news, and faces were stretched with worry as questions flew.
Jula could not keep herself from spiraling with worry, her family's excursion fresh on her mind. They were heading to the site where an alien crashed? Something that she had believed, before, was nothing more than a story from her brat of a nephew. A fanciful tale to cover up the clumsiness of a child who fell and scratched their arm. Now? Now she knew it to be true, and that worried her more than anything she could imagine.
The press within the crowd hurled questions at Diplomat Xandros, but the armored Osmosian neglected to answer any of them individually. Instead, he offered, "I understand that you are confused, and that many questions are unanswered. More information will be coming within the official channels in the hour. But rest assured, I will work with the Reach to ensure that our planet remains safe from those outsiders who deign to do it harm."
Before anyone could object, Scarlet Scarab blasted off into the air, leaving Jula alone on the stage, unsure how to possibly continue even while the cameras continued to roll. Her producers were clearly agitated, but there were far more questions than answers. It took all of thirty seconds before she lost a third of the audience, their retreating forms scampering through the streets to return home. Another minute, and she had barely a few dozen who remained, though their attention was on the skies, their thoughts on the aliens, and their actions ignoring her.
Jula ordered an assistant to carry the prototype behind her as she disappeared backstage. Vir Actus had not prepared her as its employee to talk to the public after an upstaging like this, not with much larger news in the background apparently happening. If Xandros was accurate, this information would likely force all-day coverage, something that hadn't happened since the Reach announced their arrival on the planet and partnership with the Triarchy.
"Any chance they're talking about Automail?" she asked weakly to one of her team, who was eagerly shifting his hands across a monitor to locate a news broadcast. A few had hastily started, their coverage detailing Xandros' sudden announcement, and it would only be a matter of time before more official news broke directly from the Powers That Be.
The answer to her question was no. Her prototype was barely mentioned. The product she'd spent years developing was a footnote in a larger story. A story ultimately involving her damn brother.
OSMOS V
August 04, 02:23 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
The long ride between the Capital and Sanitas was the perfect time to speak with Gabriel, so long as I could do so while no one else was awake. We'd been trapped in the "station wagon" for hours, and conversation had lulled at various points once the human had revealed many of his more recent conversations with the missing's families had proven fruitless. We had quickly become the center of his investigation, if only thanks to my experience with the alien, and I wanted so desperately to make myself useful on this trip. I wasn't going to be the little kid in a road trip movie that annoyed the hell out of all the adults.
I had not taken the slip of paper burning a whole in my pocket and passed it to him yet. Openly passing it in front of the others would be a mistake. A confident mistake, perhaps, but I was not sure that I could trust the man well enough to play it cool for my family. I did not want to field questions about reincarnation, about lack of trust, about deception. There was just… a lot that had to be considered, so I held off and continued an anxious loop of indecision.
Two hours into the drive, Mother had reached over and touched one of the windows near Grandfather's head, while he had continued to drive. Gabriel had watched with interest as her hand had become like glass, and then she had placed the hand above my lap.
"Try it."
I had blinked. "Mother, you-"
"Before I change my mind, I want to see what you can do."
Excitedly, I had followed her example. It had taken me much longer to produce any meaningful effect, but after nearly thirty-seconds, I had some success as each finger up to the second knuckle became as transparent as the window. It had lasted a whopping ten seconds before the effect had faded, but it had been one of the proudest moments of my second life.
To do this in front of her? It was magical.
"I can do more!" I had explained. "I'm working on it. There's this book I found online, and it has these passages that explain the inner-workings of the…"
I had rambled for nearly ten minutes, with only the occasional interruption from Mother. She finally had let the effect on her own arm go, becoming flesh again. "You have some control. That's good. I don't expect you to be in any danger, Cassian, while we are there, and I want you to promise me that you won't do anything foolish if we somehow find ourselves mired in it."
I had wanted to ignore the request, but I eventually had relented. "Yes, Mother. I promise."
For the next few hours, until long after night had fallen, she had fielded questions, had provided support, had tried to quietly coach me on the use of the Gift. I had clung to every word she spoke, every idea she possessed, every piece of advice she offered. Grandfather had listened in amusement, and Gabriel had focused primarily on the environment around us. He had played it cool, and if this was his first trip to Osmos V, perhaps this was the longest conversation about Osmosian powers he'd witnessed.
I had made progress in both the length of time I could maintain it and the amount I could transform. It was not enough to fight off that alien, but it was enough to maybe find use in a really condensed pinch. I could reliably transform up to my wrist in both the glass of the window and the treated leather of the seat, though other materials had been more difficult.
"I read somewhere that changes can be permanent. Is that true?"
Mother considered the question for a long moment, but it was Grandfather who answered. "Usually the changes last a few minutes. Matter, energy, DNA – it doesn't matter. I've known friends who can push it longer, but it's more taxing. Permanence? Haven't heard of that."
"Do you think it could be done but just has not yet?"
Mother had no answers for that, and I wondered exactly what was happening molecularly to allow this to happen to the composition of our bodies. I didn't know a lot about physics in my first and certainly not my second life. Different chemical composition also meant different subatomic forces holding material together. Wood, stone, metal – they were each held together differently, and I could make my body like them without somehow losing control of them?
Mother broke my reverie with a hand on my knee. "Using the Gift should only be for emergencies, Cassian. Never take unnecessary risks, or you'll push yourself too far. I don't- don't want to lose you, son."
I gripped her hand tightly.
"Y'all seem close," Gabriel commented from the equivalent of the passenger seat.
"Of course," Mother lied. "We are-"
An audio broadcast began playing on the monitor within the console, announcing an emergency bulletin. These did not happen often, and Mother's voice trailed off entirely as her attention honed in on the words.
"Good evening. This is Elder Gordia of the Triarchy."
My stomach churned. The human was tightly focused on the words, and Grandfather pulled the vehicle to the side of the desert pathway. The technology for this was kind of broadcast was not perfect, and the message was scratchy this far into the desert.
"Earlier today, Diplomat Xandros announced that the Reach have uncovered a new and dangerous element to our planet. I will confirm the veracity of these statements: aliens walk among us, and they hold hostile intent for our people."
Everyone locked eyes with Gabriel, whose shock was palpable. Before we even made it to the site, the Reach announce this?
"A series of crash landings have been happening throughout the past several months," they've known about this for months and said nothing? "and we have been working tirelessly during this period to handle the situation with care and to avoid panic."
"This is it," Grandfather muttered, eyes wild.
"We cannot jump to conclusions," Gabriel stated, lips in a thin line.
"- iens have arrived. From what intelligence we have been able to gather, these aliens are hostile and without the ability to reason. Communicating with them has consistently failed to gain positive results. They are incredibly dangerous, incredibly violent, and incredibly cruel. Rest assured, they are few in number – we cannot give exact figures, but we can confirm that the number of detected landings is somewhere in the upper twenties."
I shot a pleading look toward Gabriel, the implications astounding. "Is that number accurate? To those that are missing?"
A long pause as Gordia's voice continued. "It could be," he explained carefully.
"If you notice anything strange or abnormal, contact your local authorities. The Triarchy will do everything in our power to put a stop to this dangerous threat, root out these alien dissidents, and dispose of them before they can do any more harm to ourselves or to our partners. Thank you."
Panic swept through Mother and Grandfather, and fear erupted into demanded questions. The human had no immediate answers for us, but he met my gaze anyway.
"Kid, I have a feeling we're going to crack this case wide open, with your help."
OSMOS V
August 04, 11:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Gabriel did not know what to make of this developing situation. The planet was already the latest in a long, uninterrupted line of conquests from the Reach within Frontier Space. All without shedding a single drop of blood, from the looks of it. Why had the Osmosians simply rolled over? And now, the Osmosians were under threat of other aliens, and he wondered how much of their territory they would lose to these assailants before they decided to stop their cowardice.
They had power. A substantial minority of their population held fantastic abilities that put them firmly in the camp of superhuman, and each of them was nominally physically stronger and tougher than humans even without their Gift. Gabriel was convinced they had the potential to do damage to the Reach's presence on this planet, and they could easily handle twenty-odd aliens, just from sheer manpower alone. There were plenty of species in space that would still be a theat even to them, and Gabriel hoped for their sakes' – and his own – that these new enemies were low on the cosmic hierarchy.
Gabriel ordered Maximus to stop the vehicle just short of the crash site, almost two clicks out. Their young boy had been guiding them throughout the journey through this section of the massive continent-wide desert, only a few miles outside of their hometown of Sanitas. He was surprised the kids had traveled that far outside of their town at the chance to see something cool, and he wondered idly to himself if Kyle had the same adventurous spirit. Considering what had happened to Cassian and his friends, he hoped that his son would be smarter than that.
"How are we going to approach this?" Lucrecia asked, as though afraid of the answer. She gripped her son's shoulder, thumb idly running through some of his shaggy blonde hair.
"Y'all are not going to approach anything," he explained quietly.
They objected, each for their own reasons. Maximus looked offended that he wouldn't ask the man to come with him. Lucrecia was merely surprised at the insinuation that they would just sit idly by. Yet, it was Cassian who had the most interesting reaction: he scrambled out of his seat and slipped outside.
Gabriel watched the family deliberate for a solid thirty seconds before he turned his attention away and allowed them the space to work through their issues while he opened his pack to gather his gear. This kid was too precocious for his own good, and he'd convinced himself he was important to this whole thing.
In retrospect, perhaps the statement he'd made a few hours ago hadn't helped.
Gabriel could tell that this was not an isolated incident, from the tone of their argument, and it felt strange that he'd bothered to bring them this far. He could have found another way that did not leave false hopes in their eyes.
"Lucrecia, Maximus, I know this is unconventional," he muttered, exasperated that it was going in circles, "but I could take him with me-"
"Are you out of your mind!?"
"Yes! Please!"
The argument continued anew, and he was caught right in the middle. He was mature enough to recognize that it was foolish for him to get involved, but, well, Cassian reminded him of Kyle, at least in spirit.
"I don't expect any harm to come to him, but I have something that can help assuage your worries."
It was a risk to show them, but he was already revealing more than he should about his role in the grand scheme of everything by dragging a family into a potentially dangerous location. If things were done correctly, they would not be able to connect the dots to his true benefactors.
He reached into his bag and pulled a small emerald capsule. With a click of one end, the object expanded in a burst of green light until a thick armored vest emerged within his grip. It was lined with interior plating while its ultimate flexibility remained, a conforming armor piece for someone of any build.
"Wearing this will keep him safe, even areas that aren't covered by the vest."
Their awe was palpable. Osmos V had nothing like this – they were nowhere close to Level Fifteen technology.
"Can I test it?" Maximus asked, and Lucrecia looked outraged.
"You can't be seriously considering this!"
"I'm curious!"
Cassian stared excitedly at the vest as though it were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. "How does it work?"
Gabriel slipped the object on over his street clothes and felt the aura settle into place, a warble of light visible for a few seconds before fading into transparency. There was a limit to its maximum output defensively, but if they were near a lone alien that could threaten its output, then they were already unsafe being this close to its last known location.
He offered himself to Maximus for testing, and the older man took a swing with a haymaker, much to his daughter-in-law's chagrin and his grandson's delight. The punch collided uselessly against the energy construct, and he did not flinch nor was he pushed by the impact. The Osmosians were each wide-eyed at the prospect, but Lucrecia recovered first.
"That's impressive, but you can't just expect us to trust you to watch-"
Maximus full-body tackled into Gabriel, and the force of it pushed the human back several feet. But he felt none of the impact, and not for the first time, he wondered how much the NFL would fork over for just this tech alone.
The Osmosian pulled back in surprise, and Gabriel made a show of dusting himself off as though it had done anything at all. "I promise you that it's effective."
Lucrecia could not accept it, and he didn't blame her.
"Come with us, then," Cassian argued. "You've got the Gift, Mother. You can keep me safe."
"This is not even-"
"What if Father is out there?" The question unmoored the adult Osmosians, and Gabriel could feel the boy's exasperation. He wondered idly if the adults were going to budge, and he knew what he would do if he were in their shoes. "You're not going to waste a chance to save him, are you?"
Gabriel doubted seriously that their missing person was here. Assuming Horatio ever made it to the Capital, that is, he was far more likely to have gone missing somewhere near the city. Despite that thought, Gabriel was not ruling anything out.
The situation with the aliens, with Horatio, with the missing – it was all linked. He could not put his finger exactly on how, nor on what connection the missing all have. The only connection he'd been able to find so far is that the missing were far more likely to be poor or lower-middle class, but there were some that broke that mold. Could they have just all been isolated people in the wrong place at the wrong time for an alien attack? It sparked of coordination, he realized, that these disparate crash landing sites throughout the continent were all attempting to target people. Perhaps they'd been eaten, but he'd not found any evidence of non-Osmosian bones.
Gabriel would never forgive himself if Cassian was there when they confirmed the missing were dead.
"Fine," Lucrecia finally shook her head. "When I tell you to run, you run."
Cassian was overjoyed, a beaming smile etched onto his face. He held out a small hand for the jacket, and Gabriel slid the armored clothing off and passed it to the boy. The man leaned down to help the boy into it properly, so that the shielding aura would hold over his form in the event of an emergency. It shrunk in several places to conform to the eight-year-old's torso.
"You're all set." He turned to the other man. "Stay here, make sure that we have a way out. If I contact you, be ready to drive to us in a hurry."
Maximus agreed with some clear concern in his voice. Lucrecia hugged him after a moment, and the older man returned the gesture. "We'll be back soon."
As Cassian prepared to lead his mother and Gabriel further into the wilderness of the desert, the man tapped the belt hidden under his clothing three times in quick succession. A complex program activated and integrated into his vision, a faint flicker of green light swimming across his field of view and flooding his sight with information from his implants and the environment around him. With the benefit of constant scanning, he was certain that if there was anything to be found, he'd find it with this.
Vir Actus loosely translates from Latin to Man Action, a reference to Ben 10's creators, Man of Action.
While we're on the topic of naming conventions, Carnifex, also, loosely translates from Latin to butcher, something I was hoping others might pick up on. Horatio's day job was as a butcher.
I have been on a Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood binge, so Jula's project title as "Automail" is merely meant as a fun reference, not a confirmation of any intentional crossover. Though, I must admit, Ed and Cassian would get along.
Like a Rollercoaster slowly click-clacking up a hill, things are being setup both in the background and around the MC. I have no doubt that broadcast interrupt was on purpose. Probably as a measure to undermine the importance of such technology and make people be more dependent on the Reach for safety from the scary aliens.
The Reach are such master manipulators I wouldn't put it past them at all.
Then you have things going on for the MC, he has a plan to make contact with the alien that I'm dying to see the result of. When I picture Gabriel, I keep thinking of Max Tennison. I know theirs no obvious evidence to suggest it but that's who I keep picturing.
