Kate
I’m overloaded with Rune’s subconscious. Overdosing on every feeling and thought he had. I want to tear the faceplate off and run. His brain is in my brain, I can’t tell our thoughts apart. They babble and pour over each other like a river rushing through my head. I’m inside his skin, or he’s in mine. I don’t know which, but it’s alien and untouched and crawling with rage and confusion.
Then I’mall Rune, every ounce of him seeping inside of me, traveling along with the dark gray alloy of the armor I’m covered in.
Earth.
Or is Hell the better name for it?
This was our first chance at making contact with grounders. The first time we saw life exist again on the planet. How did my men turn on me?
Why did they?
I don’t feel anything at first when they rip the armor from my face. No, that’s a lie. I feel the wind. The very air that carries all the viruses and bacteria which decimated this once-thriving planet. There’s warmth on my face, it drips down from my forehead and pools on the hard, black surface that winds around the groups of buildings and dwellings here.
The three Caelum that have committed treason and mutiny against me have vanished. I watched them take a small grounder, moments ago. Another one is left, watching me. I want to call out, but now all I feel is pain, as if my skin was sliced from off my face with pure molten plasma.
I can’t see very far and dark spots cloud my vision. The air must be pure poison here. The parasites and bacteria are probably festering on the open parts of my armor. Bolts of electricity cut across the sky, and drops of what most likely is toxic acid fall from where my people call home.
I’m abruptly aware of the grounder storming up to me, shouting. Its hair is long and mangled, its teeth are bared, ready to bite. Its hands—its fingers filthy with germs and deadly toxins—grab at me, slapping and scratching. “Where are they taking everyone?” it yells.
Heat burns through my organs. The grounder’s voice is soft and high, different than any I’ve ever heard. Again, I try to speak but my mouth is too dry. My body must be decaying from the inside out.
The grounder stumbles forward and heaves me by my armor, dragging me over the rough ground. It curses as it shouts. If I weren’t about to die from breathing the lethal pathogens that fester on this planet, I would probably find this comedic.
Something strange bubbles up under my chest plate.
Death is soon upon me.
The grounder drags me farther, slamming me against curves and craters that scar the ground here. Then it grunts and pushes me up into a metal rectangular box. I’ve seen these contraptions before, rolling about the blacktop veins of this world. Vehicles. Mobile units of transportation.
There’s a sharp bright beam of light that blinds me, and that foreign, musical voice asks again, “Where did they take my sister?”
This close to the grounder I can see clearly and what I do see nearly stops my heart dead inside my armor.
The grounder is a female. We found one. We found a female!
Her face is smeared with earth and filth, but underneath I can see the soft shell of her skin, and eyes the color of the laurel we grow in the arboretum.
My mind fights through the saturation of Rune in my head. My nerve endings feel things as he touches them, like it’s some sick virtual-reality game. I want to claw the metal off my face, but my muscles feel stiff and atrophied. The muscles in my stomach tighten to a sickening twist, my tendons coil and tremble like my body is fighting for its right to be free.
The metal I’m trapped in squeezes me and heats my skin to a painful temperature. A sudden, dizzying pixelated pattern streams across my eyes and zaps out in a loud horrifying pop. Something sizzles across my arms and I somehow gain control over them again. Electric-white noise bursts in and my hands claw at my jaw trying to find the release of the helmet, but it feels soldered on, fused into my bones.
I have to find a way to break out of this tin leotard.
The left screen of my faceplate goes black then fades out into real-time view of Pious’s metal legs sauntering back and forth in front of me. His voice is strangely echoing out, tinged with sharp spikes of sound. Every time he paces to my left, he slams on the uploading dock like it’s busted and a good hard smack will fix it right up.
Typical. He’s an adolescent boy trapped inside a testosterone-infested flying saucer. I scream at him inside my armor, but no sounds come out.
Another hard punch out of Pious’s fist against the uploading station and my vision goes black, and a small red pinpoint flashes rapidly in the middle.
“Reboot!” Pious shouts.
REBOOTING.
“Replay!” Pious’s voice is louder now, full of rage. “Reboot and replay! For Solar sake, work!”
In that moment, it hits me, how absurdly funny it all is. Pious, the self-appointed general of the dumbass space pirates is having a complete meltdown and he’s throwing a tantrum.
