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What? What had they seen that I hadn’t?
Iron Hoof’s lips curled back from his teeth in what I assumed was meant to be a smile. He loved seeing those dead bodies. I guessed his only regret was that he hadn’t been the one to cause them.
The workers on the screen dug the dirt away and pulled the pair of creatures from the piles of dirt. They laid them beside the other dead Yayora bodies. The two bodies were roughly the same size. Their faces were mirror reflections of each other with small differences between them.
Twins.
They wore soiled contestant uniforms.
A deathly hush filled the studio as the same thought passed through their minds.
“Wait,” Quus said, “aren’t they the…”
He let the sentence hang.
Aren’t they the Changeling siblings?
That’s what he wanted to say.
But the words never reached his lips.
He turned, slowly, to peer at the Changeling siblings standing behind the sofa on his talk show.
The audience was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
“You’re not the Changeling siblings?” Quus said.
A broad grin spread across the Changeling siblings’ faces.
“Afraid not,” Stari said.
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Iron Hoof stood up from his seat and reached for his blaster pistol.
Stari had the jump on him and fired first. At such close proximity, the plasma ate through his armor and burst through the other side, slamming into a set of lights that fell from the ceiling and smashed to the floor. The audience members barely managed to leap out of the way.
Iron Hoof pressed a hand to the hole in his chest and then slumped to his knees. He collapsed into a messy pile on the floor.
The fake Klang leveled his blaster at the presenter, who raised his hands.
“I’m just a pawn!” he said. “I just do what I’m told.”
“So do I,” the fake Klang said.
He pulled the trigger. Quus slumped forward in his chair. His green blood flowed from the open wound in his chest.
It was pandemonium after that.
I didn’t have it in me to gun down innocent members of the audience—even if they were complicit in the murder of countless alien species for their entertainment.
I didn’t have the same issue with the Changeling soldiers that rushed into the studio. We fired back at them and took off into the backstage area. We weaved between the stagehands that tore their headphones off and bolted for the nearest exit.
It was nice to see them with a little terror in their eyes for a change.
“We need to get to the Control Room!” Stari said. “Where is it?”
“This way!” I said.
I led them toward an exit. Two Changeling soldiers burst in with their pistols drawn. Stari and her comrade dispatched them with ease.
