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.