Chasing Orion
Chapter 6: Eyes of the Storm

Time slowed down to a crawl as my reflexes took over. I threw myself over top of Mara to shield her from the weapons fire as best I could. The pain from the impact of their cannons was indescribable, like ripping off a thousand pieces of my skin. I braced myself against the ground and bore down. After a few moments, I was kneeling in a pool of my own blood that was running down from my back.

I could feel the wounds healing which made the matter worse knowing they would not stop until I was dead. The cannons hit me relentlessly for about half a minute before they let up to reload batteries, and I could feel my armor struggling to repair itself from the damage it just sustained. I just stared down at Mara’s face trying to push the pain to the back of my mind.

A fine layer of dust and sand from the enormous cloud of debris, covered her face from the assault. I wiped it away from her lips with my fingers and leaned down gently giving her a kiss.

“I love you,” I whispered in her ear, and engaged her mask back over her.

At that moment, I felt the last of my remaining humanity fade away. Any concern I had about not hurting these humans was gone, more so for the Sah. The monster inside me rose to the surface and boiled over.

My claws extended along with my fangs. The true form of what I was, pushed through and I sat up tilting my head upward and roaring as loud as I could. The sand around me vibrated as my roar echoed off the pyramids, causing the Sah troops approaching stopped to stop in their tracks.

I lunged into the air grabbing ahold of the fighter above me tearing into its underside. I slashed and ripped out parts until it lost power and started to crash. Climbing to its roof, I leaped off to an adjacent ship ripping its cockpit open. The pilot reached for his sidearm as I clawed my way inside. Before he had a chance to draw it, I sank my teeth into his neck piercing through his mask and jerked my head away ripping out part of his neck, spraying blood all over the cockpit and myself.

I grabbed his controls and forced the fighter to spin wildly and smash into another fighter. I tore through the roof and climbed out jumping down into the contingent of guards. As fast as I could I slashed and cleaved them throwing pieces toward other guards. The townsfolk began to scream and scatter in every direction from the carnage. I lunged from the pile of dead guards toward one of the humans trying to run away and bit them taking in a big gulp of blood surging my energy.

I tore through the street like a whirlwind slashing and ripping at anything I came into contact. The other dropships arrived and the two Orionak from the river shifted their armor for combat and jumped into the chaos. One of them landed right in front of me, and I spun around quickly kicking him in the chest sending him hurdling into the air out of town. The other drew two sickles and posed for attack.

We both stood there about ten feet apart assessing each other, waiting for the other to strike first. I flashed him my teeth and slowly took a step forward. I could see him trembling slightly which told me that he did not really want to do this.

All my muscles tensed up as I lowered into a crouch. I lunged at him aiming to rip out his heart. When I was mere inches away from striking him, a massive concussion hit me in the side sending me flying away and through the wall of a building.

It was Ra. He sprinted in and kicked me in the ribs, now standing in defense of the Orionak.

“That’s enough!” Isis’s voice came booming through the streets.

I looked out from the collapsed side of the building to see all the gods standing on a rooftop looking down, standing alongside the Orionak I kicked through the air a minute ago. They jumped down and joined alongside Ra.

Isis looked over to Mara lying in the crater and her posture changed relaxing her shoulders. Osiris and Hathor followed her eyes and came to the same discovery. Hathor quickly slid over to Mara and knelt at her side.

I bashed and kicked my way back out of the rubble and made a move toward Hathor.

“Don’t touch her! Stop!” I yelled at her.

Hathor did not flinch by my threatening posture and put her hand over Mara’s heart resting it on her armor. Ra drew his sword and started to walk over towards us. As Hathor looked up at me, I punched her hard in the side of the face making her rock sideways.

She shook off the blow and looked back up at me. I opened my hand tensing my fingers and swung at her with my claws.

“STOP!” Osiris shouted making a shockwave with his voice shaking the dust and sand off the surrounding buildings.

Townsfolk that were knelt bowing, tried to bow down further pressing themselves against the ground. I stopped my swing and looked over to him.

“Why? Tell me why I shouldn’t kill every single one of you. You took away from me the only thing I ever loved and wanted. One thing and you stole it from me,” I said with my voice cracking from anger.

“It was a mistake Talrin. They were just defending against an intruder. No one knows about you remember?” Osiris’ voice was low and controlled.

“You could have stopped them the moment you knew it was us,” I shifted my position taking a few steps toward Osiris.

Ra stopped in between us with his sword ready to attack.

“We regret what happened to your mate,” Isis said taking a few steps in front of Ra who nervously held his position. “We know of what happened to you at Atlantis with the Greys. We were unaware they were even here until the battlecruiser opened fire on you allowing us to detect the weapons fire. Our fleet went on high alert.”

I darted back next to Mara’s side and knelt next to her shifting my appearance to normal and changing my armor down to street clothes.

“Is that supposed to comfort me?” I asked scooping up Mara in my arms.

“No. I just want you to think about what you’re doing here. You were attacking innocent people,” she said motioning for Ra to sheath his sword.

I looked around at the two dozen bodies spread throughout the street then back to Isis standing up. Despite the defensive posture of the gods, I walked toward Isis holding Mara close to my chest.

“Well, if you would have been here, this would have been you,” I whispered as I walked by pushing past between them deliberately running into Ra’s shoulder.

He did not resist me or respond to my movement. I walked up to Osiris stopping just in front of him staring him directly in the eyes.

“Don’t forget who made this monster,” he said quietly.

He inhaled slowly, and then I sprinted off toward the river leaving a small vortex of sand behind me.

I bound over the river to the other bank effortlessly and sat Mara down within a small cluster of palm trees. The last sliver of sun was sinking into the horizon. I collapsed down her mask and sat down next to her pulling her into my lap and wrapping my arms around her. I listened for any ships or anyone following me but there was no one. I cleaned the dust and sand off her face and corrected her hair with my fingers.

Overwhelming sadness pushed the anger and hatred to the back of my mind and I began to cry uncontrollably.

“This is all my fault. I should have been right there with you, protecting you. I’m sorry,” A teardrop fell from my cheek landing on to hers.

It was blood instead of clear, normal tears.

“Another benefit to being what I was,” I sarcastically thought to myself looking down to my hands stained with blood from my rampage.

Another one of the pyramid ships dropping down through the clouds and landing next to Isis’ flagship interrupted the darkness of the night. The internal lighting of both ships from all the decks illuminated that end of city.

I sat there holding her for several hours thinking about everything that had happened in the last few days. Second-guessing every decision, I made.

Once the moon started to rise, I took Mara back to the necropolis to one of the mummification chambers reserved for the Pharaoh. I ignored everyone I passed on the street who immediately ran at my sight. The Sah guards also seemed to avoid me and did not bother me, I assumed from the spreading of information to the events of today.

I gently set her body down on one of the limestone preparation altars, and removed her belt and necklace, attaching her weapon node to my back, and taking out the small figurine the fisherman had given to her and placed it in her hand.

I stole one of the wrapping bundles reserved for the Pharaoh and wrapped her with absolute precision while reciting our burial incantation to send her to the afterlife.

Knowing that the burial registry of the necropolis is highly guarded and cataloged, I would never be able to inter her inside one of the grand sarcophaguses. The guards would notice and desecrate anything I would make.

I picked up her body and went back out into the night. The streets had an eerie stillness to them. Normally you could find the guards patrolling around and a few of the townsfolk active in their duties, but tonight the city looked desolated.

High up in the sky the fighters were patrolling in formation around the perimeter of the city, and the lights of the flagship were down to a minimum. I walked out on to the street heading for the large pyramid cradling Mara in my arms.

I made no effort to hide or walk through the streets undetected knowing that my appearance was far from human. Given the previous events this evening I was almost certain that nobody wanted anything to do with me. As I got closer to the pyramids, I began to pass some of the guards stationed at their normal posts outside of the armory and gold stores.

They just watched me nervously as I walked by and did not try to stop me. When I rounded the last corner leading up to the entrance to the build site, Ra was talking to a small group of the guard captains going over the plans for the building tomorrow.

He took notice of me walking up and reached for his sword. The other guards repositioned their weapons and stood at the ready.

Without hesitation, I calmly walked up to Ra who turned to stand in my path. I continued to walk along and stopped right in front of him never taking my eyes off his. He looked down at Mara in my arms, then back up to me. I could see the reflection of my face in his mask and could see the furiousness and despair in my appearance.

He nodded to me slightly turning while stepping backwards allowing me to pass.

“Attention,” he commanded and the guards turned snapping to attention and shifting into formation. I walked passed him and headed around the back end of the large pyramid.

All the memories of bringing Mara here for the first time when she was dying, flooded back into my mind. Watching her drink blood for the first time and then making love to her in the after effect of its euphoria.

The smell of her skin, and how her eyes fluttered different colors when we were together. It was the single happiest moment in my life, and it was going to be the only one I would ever have. It was only fitting that this would be the place to inter her.

We went inside the back entrance and down into the lower chamber. The room looked the same as we had left it, with the young girl’s blood still pooled in the sand. I sat her body down on the altar and knelt next to the pool of blood.

I looked up to the Anubis statue overlooking the room, and then started digging into the sand. This far below ground, the sand turned quickly into the sandstone bedrock, which was little difficulty for me. I clawed and smashed out the ground forming a deep hole the length of her body and the same in depth.

I carved out an indentation like the inside of the sarcophaguses in the stone to rest her body on and scribed hieroglyphics along the entire wall with my finger. I told the story of our first meeting and message for her soul to read proclaiming my love and devotion to her.

Jumping out of the hole, I darted back outside gathering up lumber they used at the construction sites. Using my nail, I cut the wood into a shape to make a box that I would encase her inside so the sand and rock would not touch her when I laid her to rest.

Going back to the altar I gently picked her up and then dropped down into the hole. I knelt holding onto her squeezing her one last time, and then set her down into the indentation. I slid the boards into place making walls, and then topped it off with a lid.

I smashed shards of rocks into the rim of the wood nailing the seams together sealing it shut. With a final goodbye, I poked a hole in my finger with my fang and scribed her name on the lid of the coffin with my blood.

After filling the hole back up with the rock and sand, I stumbled back outside defeated, collapsing to my knees. I looked up at the moon, which was passing through Orion and roared at the top of my lungs. I could hear a flock of birds off in the distance fly away and then it was silent again.

A noise to my left broke the silence, and I snapped my head over to look and growled. It was Ra. I quickly sprinted over to him picking him up by the throat. He dangled there for a few moments and then slowly rose his arms stretched out to his sides. I ripped the sword off his belt and threw it off to the side about a hundred feet.

“I—am sor—ry,” he struggled to force out through me crushing his throat.

His words angered me and I made an aggressive grunt tossing him backwards. He landed on his feet and slid to a stop bracing himself. I jumped onto the side of the pyramid and started to climb up the slope.

Ra rubbed his throat with his hand and collapsed down his mask at risking discovery of his true appearance.

“I know how you feel; I lost my wife and daughters.” He walked over staring up at me.

I paused from my climb thinking about what he said. As far as we had known, Hathor was his wife and I had seen her after the attack.

“Hathor is your wife,” I said looking down at him.

“No, those are just stories for your people. My family was slaughtered in an attack on our home world, three-thousands of your years ago.” With his mask down, I could see the emotion on his face as he said it and knew it was true.

I recalled back to the interface with the database and remembered about the invasion of their home world by one of the warring species. They had a gruesome and bloody war with them for three decades before finally forcing the invaders to leave. The Orionak lost over thirty percent of their population and five percent more from the biological weapons used on them.

“Then you understand what I must do,” my voice became guttural as I said it and continued to rapidly scale the wall.

When I got to the top, I broke down again crying remembering the last time I was up here with Mara. The young girl’s body was also gone from here confirming Mara’s theory that they had probably found the body. Anger overtook my sadness again as I stared at the pyramid flagship off to the side.

“I’m not going to tell you that it’s going to get easier, but I can tell you that you will get used to the pain. What you do with it is what will define how she is going to see you,” Ra’s voice came from behind me. “Her soul is watching you right now from the nether world.”

“What did you do?” I asked him still staring at the flagship.

“I joined our military the next day,” he walked over standing next to me. “All I wanted to do was fight, and that was the best way I thought that would happen. As I am sure you recall, after the invasion we spent the next hundred and fifty years counterattacking the Kilis. We nearly eradicated their entire species from our vengeance. I murdered hundreds of them most of them innocent people, and when it was all over the person I was before had also been murdered.”

He held up his arm and a holographic image emerged from his bracer of his wife and daughters. I looked down at it thinking about Mara.

“All I felt in the end was more pain knowing that I had just done the same thing to those people that were done to ours. It gave me no comfort and no closure from their death. What made it worse was knowing that they had seen me do that from the afterlife. I was ashamed of myself, and I knew they were ashamed of me.

Once they returned us to our base, I resigned from the military and took up a position within the political side of our people. I thought that the only way to make things right was to try to do some good by helping our people. Eventually as I progressed through the ranks I learned of the experiments with the Ut’ari and thought that if we could find a way to communicate with the other side, then I could talk to my family again and beg for their forgiveness.” He lowered his arm back to side and walked over to the ledge toward the flagship glancing back to me.

“Don’t make the same mistake I did. I know you have an internal battle raging inside you with what you are, but don’t lose control of it.” He keyed a button on his bracer and dissipated in a flash of light.

I thought about his words while looking out across the city. Part of me knew that what he said made sense, but the darkness inside me disagreed. I did not have any desire to go wage war on anyone; in fact, my strongest desire was to do absolutely nothing. I was completely numb inside.

I laid on top of the pyramid thinking about Mara and the complexity of my life until the early morning. When my mind came back to reality, workers had already begun to show up and the town filled with the muffled roar of conversation.

The Orionak fighters and patrol ships were flying down lower to the city now and spread out further along the perimeter. I got up and looked over the edge to the ground. Ra was on the landing platform talking to Khafre as the workers were pouring into the construction yard.

Everything looked like a normal day. I could see the area of the city where we had the attack, and workers had already begun to remove the rubble from the destroyed buildings. A burial pit on the edge of the necropolis was under construction and bodies carted toward it then piled alongside of it.

I turned to look off toward the direction of the living quarters to see if I could see my house and with it, possibly my parents, but the surrounding buildings and canopies obscured it. Glancing back to Ra, he was now looking up at me as Khafre was explaining something to him with exaggerated hand gestures. Once our eyes met, he focused back down to the Pharaoh.

I engaged my armor to the ceremonial volcanic armor I had used before on my first appearance and leaped off the top of the pyramid into the square below.

A large cloud of sand kicked up from my landing, and I straightened up composing myself as I walked out of the cloud. Everyone immediately froze in place including the Sah not knowing what to do. Some people had never seen me before, and those who had, remembered and started to leave the area.

Ra and Khafre took notice and looked on intently from the top of the platform mildly concerned. I slowly looked around me before walking off toward the main area toward the ramp leading to the platform. I could feel the fear fuming off the people as I walked past them.

Oh, how very much I wanted to tell them the truth. They were just pawns in the grand plan of the Orionak. That day was not today however, I still needed them for my own plans. As I approached the platform, a girl had walked out away from the on looking people and stood with her hands clasped together, fidgeting with them nervously.

I stared at her turning to head up the ramp. When I got a few paces up, she yelled to me,

“Hello. Do you not remember me?”

I sighed to myself and dashed over to her, stopping a few millimeters from her face blowing her hair blocking her vision. I growled deeply and the crowd gasped taking a few steps backward. She did not flinch and just stared at my eyes blinking nervously.

“Why should I remember you, human?” I said in a low voice, looking to the startled crowd then back to her. “Are you not afraid of me?”

She grabbed my hand and held on to it. It was warm and soft. She brushed the hair from her face looking up at me. I took a step back and gasped myself. Her eyes blazed a bright blue color and the familiarity came back into my mind. It was the girl from my first appearance.

“You do remember me, don’t you?” she said ever so delicately, running her finger down the place in my chest where Ra’s sword tried to skewer us both.

I turned to go back up the ramp pulling her hand free and hesitated looking back at her grasping onto the hilt of my sword. I altered my mask for two small holes and inhaled deeply taking in her scent.

“You won’t hurt me.” Smiling she took a step toward me.

Her scent was very appealing but it did not have the same effect as it did before. One of the Sah guards came up from behind her striking her in the back of the knees forcing her to kneel.

“Kneel before your gods,” he ordered pushing her down from her shoulders.

Before the Sah had time to look back up, my sword pierced through his chest cleaving his heart in two. I slowly pulled it out and spun around kicking him in the chest sending him flying backwards about a hundred yards. I sheathed my sword and looked to the other guards that were now debating on what to do.

I held my hand out to the girl and she took it hesitantly. I helped her back up to her feet and she stared up at me like the first time we met. I took a few steps back from her and she reached out with her hand as if she did not want me to go.

I turned away from her and proceeded up the ramp. The street started to return to normal when I was halfway up the ramp. Khafre met me at the top of the ramp upset with what I had just done. He put his hand on my chest stopping me from walking past.

I looked down at his hand then glanced over his shoulder to Ra who shook his head side to side.

“If you want to remain Pharaoh, never touch me again,” I said pushing past him growling, stopping to whisper in his ear. “I am not one of them, I will kill you.”

He shifted nervously stunned in place from my words and turned to Ra, who deliberately was avoiding looking at him. Looking off the platform, I slowly walked along the edge of it watching the people down below.

I stood posed like a statue overlooking the street for most of the day. My mind was wandering thinking about Mara. The day passed by underneath me in a matter of seconds, until the departure of Isis’s flagship broke my concentration.

The engines kicked up an enormous cloud of sand that blanketed most of the city. The people below scrambled to take shelter where they could while most of them just huddled together. With the sunlight mostly obscured from the cloud of sand the town took on an appearance of night.

I took the opportunity to change my armor into hooded street clothes jumping down from the platform. With everyone distracted from the sandstorm, blending in on the street became easy. I walked around for a few more hours just thinking to myself until I turned onto the residential district. I had seen this place a million times, every time I came home. I slowly made my way to my house and waited just outside from it across the street.

I could smell my mother’s cooking and knew that my father would be along shortly for dinner. I wanted to go inside and tell her everything and to see my sister again, but I knew that they could never know what happened.

To come back in to their lives now was not only dangerous but would put them in danger if the Orionak found out. My life as a human was over.

As the sun started to go down, I wandered around the streets not really motivated to do anything. I had no purpose anymore without Mara. I did not need to sleep and I had literally no responsibilities. I was completely alone even though the city was full of people.

I stopped at one of the shops that sold a fermented fruit beverage made from grapes that Pharaoh traded from the Sumerians. It was a common place for the men and soldiers to frequent after the workday.

The shop also sold food and other drinks and functioned like a social gathering area for friends to relax. It was the equivalent of a modern-day bar or pub. There were several of them spread throughout the city placed along the main thoroughfare.

The inside had partial furnishings and upscale compared to the normal decor you would find elsewhere in the city. A dozen or so wooden tables made of a dark wood primarily found south of us in the jungle area, filled much of the tavern. Opposite the door was a stone fireplace and an area off to the right behind a longer wooden table for making and serving drinks.

The barkeep greeted me as I entered to which I just nodded making sure he could not see my face under my hood. A dozen or so men mostly from the construction site filled the tavern, with a few of the lower guard members positioned at the table serving the drinks.

I moved to the back of the room and sat at a table mostly cast in shadow from the angle of the fireplace. One of the servant boys came by asking if I wanted any food or drinks and I just waved him off with my hand.

Within such a confined area, my heightened senses allowed me to hear every conversation, heartbeat, and minor noise that was going on. The clanking of glasses and utensils was almost aggravating to the point where I wanted to change into my armor just to make the noises go away.

I focused on the conversations, which helped to dull out the minor noises from objects. The guards were talking about my appearance this morning, speculating who I was. A pair of workers was complaining about the heat of the summer, while another group was discussing the finer points of Egyptian medicine, something that was new to our people, and came from the Orionak.

I listened in on the guards again who were now arguing about who I was. They had decided that I was one of the higher court members that had yet to be known to them given my insubordination to Khafre and Ra, not to mention the first time that I appeared Ra tried to kill me.

I found humor in their theories and wanted to add my own two cents just to add to the mystery. I sat there for a few hours watching people as they came and went. I was one of the more popular topics apparently running through the city, but mostly the conversations revolved around work and the pyramid.

About midnight the tavern was closing for the evening and I ventured back out on to the streets along with a younger couple in their mid-twenties that had just been married a few weeks ago. Coincidently they were heading in the same direction I had chosen to go and I followed behind them about ten feet.

Being the only ones on the street, the scent of them was much more concentrated and my thirst kicked in. I had never really concentrated on the differences between the smells of men and women, but now it was apparent to me.

Her scent was much more delicate and sweet like a flower, while his although still sweet was much more pungent and mixed with an earthy quality like grass or hay. I wanted them both, but she was more like dessert.

We walked for several minutes before they turned down one of the narrow corridors that ran between buildings. It was common for people to take these types of shortcuts to enter the residential district, instead of having to walk the extra four or five hundred feet to one of the entrances.

I quickly jumped over the building and appeared in front of them blocking their path. The alleyway was very dark and was not any wider than the two of them walking together. At first, they did not notice me waiting for them, until they got within about fifteen feet and then stopped abruptly.

With the darkness of the alley, I knew they could not make out any of my features.

“What do you want?” the man asked me nervously. The woman just held on to his arm tightly.

I began slowly walking toward them lowering my hood down and extending my fangs. The young woman scrunched her eyes trying to see me through the darkness. I flashed my teeth at her growling quietly, her eyes got big, and she started to walk backwards pulling on her husband.

“Stay back,” he shouted drawing a small dagger from his side. “Someone help!”

I lunged at him, grabbing him by the shoulders knocking the woman to the ground. I covered his mouth with my hand and he began to fight back against me.

“Shhhhhhh,” I whispered to him then sank my teeth into his neck.

The woman screamed as the blood poured down onto the sand and frantically clawed her way backwards away from me. The man began to stab me in the back making me bite down harder. Within a few seconds, it was over. I let go of him and he collapsed to the ground like a ragdoll, turning my attention to the woman.

I let out an eerie guttural laugh wiping the blood from my chin. I crouched down staring at the woman as she stood up to run away. I quickly darted to the other side of the alley in front of her blocking her path. She collided with me flailing her arms from the surprise of my appearing in front of her. She turned and ran the other way, and I slashed at her leg with my claws tripping her.

She grasped ahold of her leg crying out in pain, clawing at the sand trying to pull herself away from me. I crouched again letting out another guttural laugh. I crawled over to her on all fours in a very animalistic manner climbing over her pinning her arms to the ground and shifting my appearance to the creature within me.

I ran my nose up the length of her torso inhaling her scent deeply, stopping at her neck. She started to whimper and shake from fear as I sniffed around her neck making soft growls and trills. I wanted to excite as much fear in her as possible before killing her. I wanted her to hate me, which I was certain she already did, given the murder of her husband.

I forced her legs open with mine and pressed myself against her. I felt her body tense up from that and I sank my teeth into her neck. The shock of it paralyzed her as she tried to scream only letting out a raspy gasp of air. A few moments later, her body went limp and her heart thumped one last time.

The energy of the blood exploded within me and I pushed myself off the ground gliding upward to my feet. I slung my hood back up and adjusted my clothes covered in blood and running down my chest. I thought about what to do with these bodies but decided to leave them as they lie.

Another concept entered my mind being what is going to happen to them. After I bit Mara, she turned into a monster like me. Then all the others flashed through my mind too. The anglers, the family on the boat, the girl we left on top of the pyramid. Was that why her body was gone?

Maybe the Sah never did find it. If she had turned as Mara did than she would be out there somewhere along with the others I bit. Without anyone there to control them, they would be like a plague, biting and infecting everyone from their blood lust. Mara took about a minute or so to turn and resurrect.

I went into a crouch again and waited. A pair of guards walked past the alley in the residential side of the street but seemed oblivious to my presence and the two bodies lying in the sand. A few minutes passed by with nothing changing in the couple. I felt mostly confident that they were not going to change, but for safe measure I clawed into their chests removing their hearts throwing them as hard as I could into the air out of the city.

I waited for the next patrol of guards to walk past, and then slipped back out onto the street in the residential district. Again, my senses heightened from the fresh blood and I could hear everyone’s heartbeat within a moderate distance with little concentration.

The sand particles in the night air made the sky look like a river as each grain sparkled from the reflection of the moon light off it. I could hear the scurrying of scorpions and beetles across the sand, and fish splashing far off in the river.

Everything felt exaggerated from the euphoric qualities the blood had on me. Colors were vibrant and seemed to move on their own as if they were alive, and I wanted more. I leaped to the roof of one of the buildings and looked out toward where the flagship rested pulsing light slowly.

Far off in the distance a thunderstorm was brewing and flashes of lightning were illuminating the clouds, which flickered all the different colors of the rainbow. I mesmerized me and I sat down to watch it relaxing back on my elbows. My mind drifted away from the storm and back to missing Mara.

Lost in a daydream of her I did not notice that the thunderstorm was almost on top of the city now. One of the big booms snapped me back into reality and I looked up to the sky. It was strange that the storm would have moved this way given how the weather patterns around here move east and west, and this came directly toward us from the north.

As I stared up to the storm, a realization hit me and for the first time sent a chill down my spine. Darting in and out of the clouds were Orionak fighters and the small crafts from the island. It was not a storm at all. It was a battle. Memories of the island and what the Greys can do to me, had me mildly concerned.

I shifted up my armor and mask, leaping off the roof sprinting through the streets winding my way through toward the pyramid. Some of the ships from both sides were crashing down out of the city sending balls of fire into the air.

Another big flash of green light and one of the Orionak dropships fell through the clouds with half of its hull blown apart. Shards of metal and debris rained down on the outskirts of town hitting a few of the outlying buildings. The dropship smashed in to the ground exploding into a gigantic mushroom cloud sending up a wall of sand and fire into the air.

The impact of the ship sent a minor tremor through the city waking the town up. Within a few seconds, the streets filled with people scrambling about in a panic. The Sah were shouting orders to guards who were setting up a perimeter around the city trying to maintain order but to no avail.

More fighters started crashing into the city destroying buildings and hitting groups of people as they ran about. I caught Ra’s flash as he appeared on the platform with a contingent of the primary guard and started giving them orders.

I bounded off the rooftops leaping onto the side of the pyramid and pushing off toward the platform landing right behind him on a knee.

“They’re coming to harvest the humans,” he said quickly continuing to direct the Sah to ground positions. “Once they are in position they will send down multiple waves of shock troops to wipe out our guards and will start to abduct people for their experiments.”

“Where’s Isis and the fleet?” I asked him, drawing Mara’s swords, which I had sheathed on my back.

“The fleet is engaged with them in high orbit and Isis,” he paused looking up. “She is defending the city by herself.”

I looked up at all the flashes of light within the clouds.

“You wanted to be a monster Talrin, this is your chance. Show them no mercy,” Ra shouted while leaping off the platform.

A series of larger ships dropped through the clouds and started to head to different parts of the city. When they got within a couple dozen feet of the ground, the large shock troops same as from the island, started to drop from underneath them into the city and opened fire on the guards.

The people ran around wildly trying to avoid each other in the chaos while the guards returned fire in defense. The shock troops outnumbered the Sah almost three to one, but it appeared that they balanced each other evenly in firepower.

Ra was down below me taking on a whole platoon by himself, moving in the close quarters on them deflecting shots with his sword. From the pyramid side of the square two shock troops platoons were flanking in from behind the pyramid trying to get a shot on Ra.

I twirled the swords around my hand and leapt off the platform toward them. I landed near the front of the group splashing sand into the air. I darted across the ground striking at the shock troops slicing at their torsos, quickly dispatching the platoons. I flicked the blood off my swords and sprinted back out into the street engaging more troops.

The ground battle raged on for almost an hour. The Greys sent down wave after wave of shock troops, which eventually thinned out the Sah enough to allow the Greys to start their own assault. Ra and I took up position within the largest density of people. Horus and Hathor had joined us as well and were defending near the palace.

Dozens of waves of smaller faster craft came down skimming the surface dropping off the Greys who were using their electrical stun weapons to encapsulate people which then became pulled up to the smaller crafts when they passed back through.

I waited on the rooftops until another wave came by and jumped out in front of them grabbing hold of the front of the ship cutting and ripping it open to get at the pilot inside forcing the craft to crash.

After another fifteen minutes or so, the remaining ships retreated up in to the clouds. There was no telling how many people they had managed to abduct, but I estimated it was several hundred. We had managed to take out over a thousand of their troops and another six or seven dozen craft.

I landed back on the ground from the final craft I just forced down before the retreat and dashed toward the nearest group of remaining Greys that were still attacking people. Without the protection of their troops, they were little to know threat at all with such frail bodies.

The last one I grabbed by the throat and held off the ground. I assumed he was one of the leaders based off his appearance compared to the others. He was slightly larger and wearing a chest piece with some type of insignia on it. He pushed his hand to my forehead sending an electrical charge engulfing my body.

I roared at him fighting through the pain dropping to a knee. I thought about Mara pushing out the pain allowing me to stand back up. I reared back and punched him in the face harder than I should have, knocking him unconscious, rupturing his eye socket, and shattering the side of his skull.

The electrical current stopped as I reared back to hit him again extending my claws. Ra ran over grabbing ahold of my arm preventing me from striking.

“Stop! We need him alive so we can extract information from him,” he said taking a small metallic halo from his belt and placing it on the Greys head.

The Grey instantly went limp and I let it go dropping him to the ground. I jumped up on top of the wreckage of the craft and looked out over the battle torn city. Red and dark blue patches stained the sand and the fog of war begun to roll in over the city as the temperature of the night air started to drop.

The flashes and booms still lingered on overhead. The cloud slowly began to roll away toward the north, exposing Isis’s flagship, which remained stationary over the city. A barrage of green energy bolts impacted the ship’s shielding, which flickered and rippled across the hull of the ship.

The flagship returned fire with a massive stream of blue balls that looked like concentrated lighting coming from several different places. The balls flew into the cloud followed by a series of bright flashes of light. The flagship rotated to another face and fired two large conical shaped lightning bolts with a red hue into the cloud.

Several additional bright flashes of lights and explosions echoed through the city, followed by several smaller ones in succession. A few seconds later a large ship dropped from the cloud smoldering and dissolving in a red colored lighting that was creeping along the hull of the ship.

The ship was the same type of spacecraft that chased Mara and I from the island. It slowly drifted out and away from city before crashing into the ground in a huge fireball. Rotating again the flagship dropped a blindingly bright white disc from the lower part of the base that slowly descended to the crashed ship.

The small disc connected with the debris and exploded in light brighter than itself turning the entire sky white forcing me to cover my eyes from the intensity. Moments later the light began to fade revealing a black ball that was completely engulfing the ship. It was sparking red and blue arcs of lighting with a swirling vortex at its core.

The ball expanded about twice in size, then rapidly collapsed down to a small point then vanished. The crashed ship and all the debris were completely gone, consumed by the Orionak’s singularity weapon.

Darkness fell back over the city and Isis’s ship descended back down landing next to the pyramid. A pair of Sah came and restrained the Grey with magnetic bracers, dragging him off toward the flagship.

Ra placed his hand on my shoulder and nodded to me sheathing his sword.

“You can still do some good for your people Ut’ari,” he squeezed my shoulder and turned to follow the prisoner.

I noticed that some of the townsfolk were looking at me with gratitude and admiration. I sheathed my swords and started to help the wounded get to the physicians that were now trying to apply aid on the street.

Occasionally a Grey would come out of hiding or manage to pop out from underneath some rubble and start attacking. I gave them no quarter and swiftly cut them down or dismembered them.

By the time the sun began to rise, the Orionak had dispatched a very large clean-up crew that were going around picking up stray weapons and using special chemical weapons to disintegrate the crashed ships and foreign bodies scattered about. Citizens took the humans to the burial areas and allowed processing per our beliefs.

The full destruction incurred during the assault did not become completely visible until the morning. I scaled the side of the pyramid and looked out over the plateau. Much of the outer lying business areas of the city received heavy damage from falling ships and heavy weapons fire. The palace also appeared severely damaged with some of the statues and one of the priest temples destroyed.

By mid-day, workers removed most of the wreckage and construction teams started to rebuild the damaged structures. Isis and Osiris were overseeing airborne operations on the platform while Ra was directing the Sah ground forces in the reconstruction.

I worked my way back to the residential district to check on my parents. This area of the city appeared to have been heavily targeted by the Greys, which made sense given the density of people there.

Despite everything that had occurred, the people still viewed me as one of the gods and would quickly kneel and bow down as I went passed them still afraid of the wrath I could incur for failure to do so. It was not helping matters that there were six of the Sah elite guards shadowing me as they did the gods.

When I arrived at the front door to my old home, there did not appear to be any damage to the building itself which was a good sign. Human blood covered the front wall and along the ground, but the majority of everything was too.

I composed myself preparing my thoughts for seeing my family again. I paused shortly right before I knocked on the door thinking about how the Orionak would handle this situation. For one, they would not knock. They did not need permission for anything really and would just walk in.

I signaled for one of the guards that I wanted to go inside, and two of them pushed through the door taking up a position on either side of the doorway. I entered the house and quickly looked around the room. My mother, startled by the abrupt entrance, fell backwards on to the floor.

She had been kneeling at my sister’s bedside tending to her wounds. I slowly walked over to the foot of the bed, which faced the doorway, and looked down on my sister. She was heavily wounded and covered in several places with bandages that were seeping blood, and her faced had many small lacerations and burn marks.

Bruises shaped like the Greys handprints, covered her arms and legs. My mother appeared to have escaped mostly undamaged other than a few cuts and scrapes along her neck and shoulder. I looked around the room again searching for my father, but he was not there.

I think my mother knew who I was looking for and she got back to her knees pressing a wet cloth to my sister’s face wiping away more of the blood. She looked around the room quickly then back to me shrugging slightly.

“They took him,” she said fighting back the tears focusing back on my sister again.

I concentrated on my sister and listened to her heartbeat, which was very faint. She had lost too much blood and would not survive through the day. I dropped to my knees at the foot of her bed placing my hand on her foot lowering my head down trying to fight back my human emotions that were pushing to the surface.

My mother’s face turned to curiosity and concern simultaneously as to why I would make such a gesture. The guards were also shifting nervously wondering why. It was unheard of for one of the gods to show any kind of emotions, let alone touch a human as I did.

I looked back up to my mother who was looking deep into my mask trying to decipher what was happening. I abruptly snapped my head and in a low deep growl in Orionak, ordered the guards back to the platform. They nodded and quickly left the house closing the door behind them.

“I can save her life, but she will never again be allowed back here,” I said turning to my mother.

She recognized something in my voice and stared at me searching for the familiarity.

“Who are you?” she asked curiously placing her hand on mine.

The coldness of my skin surprised her and she pulled her hand back in reaction before slowly pressing it back on to mine. I pulled my hand away shifting my armor, putting gloves over my hands.

I thought hard about lowering my mask and revealing myself to her, but that is not something the Orionak had ever done. No one knew what they looked like under their masks except for me. Deep down my mother knew who I was. It was an instinctual ability, inherent in every mother to recognize her children.

I could also sense that she was struggling with the fact that she had seen my hand and had seen that the color of my skin was no longer the color of humans.

“Talrin,” my sister mumbled fighting to raise her hand out to me.

I took her hand walking to the other side of the bed opposite my mother and sat down next to her on the bed.

“Why did you leave me?” she forced her eyes open looking up at me.

“I’m sorry Cam, I didn’t mean to, it was an accident,” I said in my normal voice.

My mother sunk back down on to the floor and started to cry having her suspicion confirmed. Other than Mara, my sister was the closest person to me. We fought and visually hated each other as siblings do, but when it came down to it, we were always there for each other.

She always came to me for comfort when our parents were fighting and never held back anything from me. We shared all our secrets together and confided in each other with our problems. Until the night I changed, we were practically inseparable.

She moved her hand up to my mask and ran her fingertips over the ridges on my cheek. I knew she wanted me to remove my mask.

“Show me,” she forced out the words coughing and struggling to breath.

My mother wiped away a small stream of blood that ran down her chin from the coughing. I collapsed down my gloves and held up my hand showing her the dark grey color of my skin. I slowly extended my nails showing her my claws, rotating my hand around so she could see them.

Her eyes got big and she forced a smile as she looked on with intrigue. I retracted them and changed the color of my skin to a normal tan color she expected.

“Keep the grey,” she immediately said pointing to my face.

I shifted it back to grey and looked at my mother. She was looking at me just as intently as Cambrian was. She nodded to me and took a deep breath. I collapsed down my mask and tears streamed down her face. Even looking as human as I could, my face still had mild characteristics of the Ut’ari in structure.

Cambrian pointed up to her mouth and tapped on her teeth. I emitted a quiet growl and extended my fangs changing my eye color from the normal brown to a very bright blue that was glowing ever so slightly.

“Will she become like you?” my mother asked adjusting my sister’s hair from her forehead.

“Not exactly the same, but similar yes. Her body will regenerate at a remarkable rate. Her strength and senses will amplify, and she we have an unhealthy appetite for human blood.” I looked back to Cambrian. “Sunlight will kill her, and she will forever have to hide what and who she is from everyone.”

“But she will be alive?” my mother asked me, picking up Cambrian’s other hand squeezing it tightly.

“Yes,” I said lowering my head from knowing just what it meant to turn her.

Mara struggled with what she was, and I had issues being with what I was. Putting my sister through the same experience did not seem like the proper course of action. Then there was the matter of the Orionak. Turning her is one thing, but having my mother know all of this was another.

As that thought went through my head, I stood up rapidly shifting my mask back on. I darted over to the door and opened it standing in the doorway. I looked back to my sister. She was upset now crying and coughing again.

“Sundown,” I said and as my mother moved to help her cough looking away from me, I walked out closing the door behind me.

I could hear my mother break down sobbing. Cambrian continued to cough and struggled to stay awake. I jumped up on to the roof, making everyone on the street uncomfortable. They had never seen anyone display the kind of powers that I do. The Orionak never did anything to show them what they were capable of.

In addition, the recent current events with the Greys put most of the people on edge. My actions in the last few days were now well known to most in the city, and it was still unknown as to where my allegiances really were. To them, I did not appear to have any side.

I attacked everyone at some point recently, and in a way, I agreed that I did not have a side other than my own. Humans were food to me, and the Orionak murdered Mara while she was saving people’s lives. Deep down I knew they were not responsible for it, but I still blamed them for it.

They never approved of her existence to begin with, and making more just like her, is something they would never allow given the history of what happened the last time.

This was my sister though. She was not a random person or someone that I had no knowledge. There was no way that I was going to allow her to die when I had a way to save her.

It was a few hours still until sundown, and the Orionak had begun to set up a defensive perimeter in case the Greys decided to come back tonight. A half dozen pyramid ships patrolled on the outskirts of town, and the sky was swarming with fighters high above the city.

I dropped off the roof in to one of the alleyways and changed my armor down to my street clothes slinking out in to the flow of traffic. Curious about what happened to my father I made my way to the burial pit at the edge of the necropolis.

The burial site, to say the least, was somewhat angering. The conflict with the Greys produced around a thousand casualties that were now being prepared for mass burial. These people were completely innocent and the Greys slaughtered them without any restraint.

One might say that the Orionak were a major cause of this, but without the Orionak here to defend the city, the Greys would have abducted the entire city for their experiments. The database never made any mention to anything peaceful related to the Greys, only that they were responsible for the disappearance of countless millions.

They would invade the home world of a species of interest then spend hundreds of years harvesting its inhabitants and stealing their technologies. That island that Isis called Atlantis, took planning, and by the looks of it, they had been here for years.

When I got up close to the pit, the bodies were moving through a dozen tents that were rapidly putting them through mummification process. Standing over the pit directing workers and Sah was Anubis, playing his role as god of the afterlife.

I tried to focus my senses and see if I could smell out if my father was there, but there was so much blood in the air, and smelling at all was overwhelming. I knew that the scribes, with help of the priests, were trying to document the names of everyone moving through to mummification. But given the large amount of them, and condition of most of the bodies, that list would be very fragmented.

Regardless, I approached the scribes and asked them if my father’s name passed through yet. After an hour of searching, I came up with nothing. I worked my way back across the site toward Anubis.

Per normal procedure, a half dozen of the elite guards surrounded him, with another group of Sah positioned strategically. As I approached the Sah tried to stop me, but I just flickered around them, leaving them pondering what just happened. The elites however did not fool so easily. They formed a wall in front of Anubis when I got close and stopped me.

Anubis turned in response to the guards wondering who had the courage to approach him in such a fashion. It was unheard of for someone directly approaching one of the gods. Anyone that did the guards killed almost instantly.

I extended my fangs and flashed them at the guards growling quietly. They hesitated and took a step away from me. The guards knew better than to test my resolve. Word of my actions when Mara fell had spread through the entire ranks of the Sah.

“You are not in your armor, we cannot converse like this Ut’ari,” Anubis said looking back out over the pits operations. “Like that you are a common man, and this is forbidden.”

My patience for this charade with gods and subordinates was for the most part gone. I had no reason to play any of these games anymore.

“As you wish,” I replied sarcastically walking off behind him.

I could feel him tense up knowing that I was about to do something foolish.

I got about fifteen yards away from him and held my hands out to my sides. The elites repositioned their weapons to the ready nervously as I flashed them a big grin.

Quickly I started to run in a small circle, picking up speed pushing as hard as I could. Almost instantly, a vortex of sand kicked up obscuring me within it. I changed my appearance forcing out the creature within and the vortex shot up high into the sky.

The sand started to pelt the guards and Anubis, caught off guard by what I was doing. I changed up my armor and mask and stopped my motion. The vortex collapsed in a waterfall of sand giving me a very dramatic entrance. Pushing through the wall of falling sand, I made my way back toward Anubis.

The guards quickly straightened up to attention from my appearance and made a path for me to pass by. The guards at this point were just as afraid of me as the townsfolk, given how many of them I dispatched a few days ago. They did not know what I was, but they knew who I was, and what I was capable of.

I walked passed them and stood next to Anubis. Most everybody in the burial site took notice to the vortex and was now staring at us intently. Anubis motioned out over the pit and the Sah started shouting orders putting everyone back to focus on their duties.

Anubis looked at me as I came up next to him and sighed,

“That was very clever and very foolish.”

“You’re pretending to be a god, I am not,” I replied placing my hand on his shoulder, and walking to the other side of him looking at the flow of bodies coming in to the site.

“On the contrary, you are more of a god at this point than we are. You are a mystery to your people and you do not follow our chain of command. You attack and kill our guards and appear as a superior because of it. If your goal was to not appear as a god, you have failed. They see you as just the opposite.”

I thought about what he said, and to a point, he was right. My actions being in clear defiance to the Orionak’s would make the opposite appearance to my people. However, they knew that they Orionak and the Sah had superiors, which should have instilled a notion of flaw among them. If I could hurt them, then they were neither invincible nor immortal.

“Why are you here?” Anubis asked shrugging off my grasp of his shoulder.

“My family was hit in the attack. My sister is dying and my father is missing. I’m here looking for my father,” My voice changed to a serious tone. “And my sister will not be dying anymore at sundown.”

He knew what I meant and turned to me abruptly. I mirrored him and looked back at him.

“Isis will never allow that,” he said in a very deep distorted voice.

“Let her try and stop me.”

He knew that my words accepting the challenge were valid. I was never going to allow them to hurt her, and given what happened last time with Mara, the threat of my vengeance was very real.

“Ut’ari, Talrin, you know why this cannot be allowed. You know what happened the last time. It spread at an alarming rate and your species was under threat of extinction,” he said looking back out to the pit.

I looked up to one of the dropships passing overhead,

“This time it’s different. What I am has never existed before. We have control over it, unlike the last time.”

Anubis thought about that for a few seconds before constructing his response.

“That risk is still too great. We will not allow her to survive. Given what we learned about your mate, we know that your progeny can be killed by our weapons, unlike yourself,” He forced out the last few words knowing it had most likely upset me.

I turned taking a step toward him getting close to him to whisper into his ear,

“Then I will come for all of you, and you will see what I am truly capable of.” I backed up and turned heading toward the stream of people bringing the dead for interment.

I heard him key a button on his bracer and the flash of his transporter cast my shadow on the sand. Undoubtedly, he was going to go warn Isis and the others as to my plan for turning my sister. A confrontation with the Orionak is not something either of wants, but I am prepared to do what I need to for my sister.

I searched around more within the burial site trying to find any indication that my father was there but came up empty. By the late afternoon, the processing of all the bodies for burial was complete. Either my father survived and was somewhere else in the city, possibly at one of the medical locations, or the Greys took him.

When I woke that first day on the flagship after my possession, I thought that the largest challenge I would have to face would come from the Orionak. As time went by and I began to learn about them and what it meant to be what I had become, my biggest enemy became myself.

With such a large threat to everything I had come to know with my people, I assumed that the nature of the Ut’ari would be the problem. I never considered that there would be another species of alien on this planet, which was far more malevolent than the Orionak had been with their experiments.

There was some solace found in knowing that the Greys would be back and vengeance executed in making them pay for what they were doing. I suppose in a way I became a weapon after all.

I worked my way back to the residential district to my mother’s house and went inside to wait for sundown. My sister was still in bad shape, and my mother was working hard to try to clean and dress her wounds.

I shifted down my armor and sat down on the bed next to Cambrian. She was unconscious but holding on to life. My mother broke down again acknowledging that she was going to die.

“Promise me that you will take care of her,” she said taking hold of my hand.

She stared at the color different between our skins and rubbed the top of my hand. She sniffed and wiped the tears away from her eyes. I squeezed her hand and placed my other hand on top of hers.

“I promise you that I will defend her with my life. She will be stronger and faster than anything you can imagine. Nothing will be able to oppose her.”

I knew that was a lie. The Greys were more than capable of causing harm with the superiority of their technology, and the Orionak weapons having the capability of killing Mara. There was a threat to her and me on this planet, but I was going to make sure that we were prepared for anything.

Whether they liked the idea or not, the Orionak was going to have to accept her for what she will be, and if they wanted my help in anything else on this planet, which included not exposing them for what they are, then they will have to do what I tell them.

I know now there were things that they decided not to share with me, and that was going to have to change. I can agree to not interfere with what they have going on here, but only if they can agree to stop hiding things from me.

My concentration broke by a familiar odor that began to linger in the air. I closed my eyes focusing on my senses. It was quiet. Far quieter than it should be this time of day. I dashed over and ripped open the door. The street was completely empty except for the elite guards spaced about six feet apart surrounding the immediate area.

I extended my fangs and walked out on to the street closing the door behind me.

“I know you’re there Isis, you might as well come out so we can get this over with.” I sniffed the air trying to narrow down her location. “Osiris. Ra. I can smell you.”

I walked to the middle of the street, and held out my hands, slowly spinning around scanning the rooftops and alleyways. I knew that Isis had the ability to vanish, and Hathor was another problem with her abilities. The others however should not be an issue if it came down to a fight.

Isis materialized about fifteen feet away from me down the street. I spun around to face her knowing that I was probably giving my flank to the others.

“I have been informed of your intentions, and although warranted, we cannot allow that to occur,” her voice was soft and controlled.

“You must have assumed that I was asking for your permission,” I replied looking over my shoulder to see Hathor and Ra emerging from the alleyways.

“We might not be gods in your eyes, but we are still in control of this city and its people. We will end her life before we allow you to turn another human.”

“It’s war then. Do you really wish to have me as an enemy?” My claws extended and I changed up my armor drawing Mara’s swords from my back.

“Put away your weapons, there is an alternative,” Osiris appeared jumping down from the roof of my house.

I lowered my weapons but kept them ready just in case. Osiris clasped his hands behind his back and slowly started to pace back and forth in front of me.

“Given that our goal on your planet is to study the effects of the Ut’ari joining, it would be advantageous for both of us, if you would allow us to experiment on you,” he paused blocking my sight to Isis and posed statuesque awaiting my reply.

Osiris was right. The Orionak’s goals are to study what I am and its effects, and thus far, they have only been able to do so in a limited capacity.

“What of my sister?” I asked him, sheathing my swords.

“We would permit you to turn her given that we can monitor the event, gather data, and call upon both of you at our leisure for tests.”

Ra quickly approached Osiris clearly objecting to his proposal,

“You aren’t seriously going to allow him to make another abomination like the last one, are you?”

Osiris turned to look at Ra, who instinctually took a step back from him knowing he was blatantly ignoring their chain of command. Ra bowed his head in submission.

“Sir, we can’t allow another one. She was too wild and he clearly couldn’t control her,” he looked at me then to Isis. “My queen, please.”

“Your incompetent guards surrounded us making a clearly threatening gesture. What did you expect her to do? You had a squadron of fighters and a dozen guards with their weapons aimed at us. Everything was under perfect control until you threatened us,” I said darting over to Ra and lowering my mask. “And now she’s dead because of it!”

I had not noticed that I was now shouting and my appearance had shifted to the Ut’ari. For the first time, I could sense fear coming from Ra. Osiris put his hand on my shoulder snapping me from my fit of anger. The others had closed in and surrounded me in response to defend Ra.

“Ra, return to the ship,” Isis motioned to him beginning to dissipate.

“I hope you….” Ra tried to reply but Isis cut him off.

“Now!” she commanded loudly. Her armor rippled a change in color quickly returning to normal.

Ra took a step backwards letting out a long sigh. He sheathed his sword and aggressively smacked a button on his bracer disappearing in a flash of light from his transporter.

My appearance changed back to normal and I shifted down my armor to normal clothes.

“I will bring her to you after she has recovered from the change. Sunlight will be lethal to her, so we will need complete isolation from the outside light during the day.”

Osiris nodded and held out his hand to me. There was a tiny silver sphere in his palm.

“This is a medical probe that will gather data for us. Twist it to activate it before you do it.”

I took the sphere from Osiris and nodded while examining it carefully. The others started to stand down and transport away after Isis vanished. Osiris motioned to the guards who started to march away in formation.

Osiris looked briefly to my house, and then back to me.

“Good luck,” he said and then vanished in a flash.

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