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“Come home,” Frankie says.
I speed toward Liatra with the satellites.
And I’m stopped short in a black void.
A slender figure stands alone at its center, and I move carefully toward it. I’m in my own body again—or at least, some imitation of my body—and this thing is taller than me, blurred around the edges. At least nine feet tall, flickering like a dying star.
“The biological imperative is survival,” he says, his voice carrying a drone like my species. He paces back and forth, and I make out bizarre features: a tail like the Skoropi, this one more slender and lacking the barbed tip. Bronze skin like a human, no scales, sharp teeth. He cocks his head and looks down at a tablet in his four-fingered hand, scrolling through data. “Cross-breeding to obtain the best possible result.”
Another voice comes—this one almost inaudible, the words jumbled. The slender figure—a hologram, I realize now—shakes his head. “Where we have failed, our children will succeed. We need to—”
The image stutters and repeats. “Survive—survive—survive—”
I move closer, wave my hand through the figure’s torso. It stutters again and restarts. “The biological imperative is survival…”
Frankie and I were right.
It was a recording.
??
My eyes open.
I convulse.
Frankie’s hand grips mine; Taraven holds my shoulder and supports my head. The vines unfurl from around my limbs and they guide me to the floor together, my ears ringing and drowning out all other sound.
Then voices come.
A lot of voices—dozens, I think. They’re jumbled and fuzzy at first, then they gain traction. I hear footsteps, too, and I turn my head to see boots and Skoropi claws on the ground.
I find Frankie’s face.
She looks so tired.
And so,sobadly wounded.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Um…everything?” Taraven offers from the other side of me. He’s crouched beside me, his tail wrapped around my ankle like he’s afraid I’ll run off. “You’ve been out for three hours. We stood here and held you while you did…whatever it is you did in there, then our joint forces came in and said the weapons had been deactivated. At that point, we thought it was best to pull you out.”
“It felt like…” I pause. I was going to say a few minutes, but it also felt like an eternity. My spatial awareness is…blurry. “I saw so much. I need to report back.”
I sit up too quickly, making my head spin. They each hold one of my shoulders, their grip loose. Frankie is shaking.
“We all need to get back to the ship,” she says. “I think our friends can take it from here.”
“Our friends…?” I start.
Then I stop entirely when I see who else is here.
A group of joint forces are clustered around the cortex and its display system. A Skoropi female—Driga, Jokahn’s wife—scrolls through the display, while her husband stands behind her and talks with Zandro, Warlord Nixeris, and Councilor Va’lora. I blink a few times to make sure I’m seeing correctly before my aunt comes toward me and kneels beside me, dressed in Lyran military blacks.
“You did well, Malix,” she says. “You avenged our people.”
Her black eyes sparkle the same color as mine—the same color as so many lost on Rath. I heave a deep breath, shaking my head.
“How are you even here?”
