So... yeah. Figured I'd try my hand at writing, I used to be good back in sixth grade... but that was almost seven years ago. This particular work is the first writing assignment I've done outside of school since then, so... we'll see how it goes. On an unrelated note, it's also based heavily off of the work I did for my English Diploma. That being said, don't laugh, and try to keep up.
Just a note: the title as of right now is only tentative, I've got a number of people pestering me to write/continue this one, so the plotline and stuff will likely change as I get feedback.
Also (and I promise this is the last non-story paragraph you’ll have to read), content may be graphic and/or controversial. I’m not trying to offend anyone (thus the spoilers), but it may happen, especially if you hate vivid imagery or hold strong religious viewpoints. So… Fair warning. No suing me now. That being said, this has been procrastinated for far too long… here is the intro.
Prologue: Life Is Just A Unit: show
DNA.
Deoxyribonucleic acid.
Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen and oxygen.
Multitudes of atoms, tiny pinpricks on a tiny pinprick in the grand scale of the universe. It seems impossible, then, that all these millions of atoms could've bonded in just the right ratios to form nitrogen bases. These bases then combine to form DNA, characteristic double helixes. DNA forms the substance of chromosomes, which control the all the vital functions and properties of single cells. Factor in the millions of cells that make up an organism, and it seems like an amazing coincidence that life could exist - and even flourish! - at any one point in the Galaxy, let alone throughout it.
Surely the odds against life in a cold, desolate, and hostile universe are phenomenally large, perhaps even infinity… No longer.
My job is to change those odds. I am Korin Cyrus, Professor of Genetics onboard the Galactic Federation Starship C-47 and leading scientist in the field. My genotype proves me human, and yet I am no mere man. I am so much more. Never in the history of the Galaxy has any one being unlocked so much potential at life’s most basic level.
I have single-handedly turned back the aging process, cured diseases that only a few centicycles ago had been deemed impossible by the greater scientific community. I have pushed the limits of what it means to be alive, and spearheaded… my legacy.
Project Cyrus.
Some say my work is damaging the balance of a universe created in the image of a greater power, but that is reasoning for the weak. I am simply making it perfect.
Now, as I gaze out from the ship’s bridge and watch the multitude of stars, each brilliant point sustenance for the orbiting biospheres around it, I realize how close we are to a breakthrough. Not just for me and my team, but for the Federation.
The ship’s computer suddenly beeps, and I jolt out of my reverie.
“Sustainable orbit achieved. Planet identified: Earth. Spatial coordinates are as follows,” it says in a crystal clear female voice. A list of complicated schematics dictating everything from current gravity to the efficiency of the life-support system flash around me as technicians (all human, of course) scurry to check for anomalies. Weaklings, all of them. How little they understand of the Galaxy, beyond their precious screens and data protocols.
I stay at the viewport. Below me lie the ship’s defences, plasma turrets and shield generators are hidden by smooth metal plating, catching and reflecting light from this planetary system’s star. This is where it all began for me, so many years ago…
But I have a job to do. My homeworld can wait, for now.
I spare one last glance at it, curving expanse of mottled brown against the Sol’s radiant background. It had been so beautiful, last time. I hoped to change that. I turn away, striding past the technicians still swarming around screens and cables like so many insects, and the pneumatic door hisses slightly before retracting into the wall.
Project Cyrus calls.
My life’s work all comes down to the success of this experiment. It’s not a question, not really. I will succeed. I must.
The door I arrive at is unmarked, but I know it is the correct one. It looks exactly like all of the other residency blocks in this corridor, but I know otherwise. Great things are happening behind this door. After a retina scan, voice analysis, DNA verification and finally a brainwave scan, I am admitted to a dark room. This entire battleship is Federation-funded for my genetics research, but there’s nothing like a little paranoia to keep away those certain… untrustworthy individuals. I doubt the Federation would approve of this particular expenditure, another reason why success is so critical.
“Welcome, Dr. Cyrus,” a male voice says as panels light up along the walls. “We’ve been expecting you.” A white-coated young man shows me to a window overlooking a sunken room. There are many more people in this room, all wearing silver hazard suits. It is critical that nothing is contaminated in this room.
/
Lives are at stake here.
Deoxyribonucleic acid.
Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen and oxygen.
Multitudes of atoms, tiny pinpricks on a tiny pinprick in the grand scale of the universe. It seems impossible, then, that all these millions of atoms could've bonded in just the right ratios to form nitrogen bases. These bases then combine to form DNA, characteristic double helixes. DNA forms the substance of chromosomes, which control the all the vital functions and properties of single cells. Factor in the millions of cells that make up an organism, and it seems like an amazing coincidence that life could exist - and even flourish! - at any one point in the Galaxy, let alone throughout it.
Surely the odds against life in a cold, desolate, and hostile universe are phenomenally large, perhaps even infinity… No longer.
My job is to change those odds. I am Korin Cyrus, Professor of Genetics onboard the Galactic Federation Starship C-47 and leading scientist in the field. My genotype proves me human, and yet I am no mere man. I am so much more. Never in the history of the Galaxy has any one being unlocked so much potential at life’s most basic level.
I have single-handedly turned back the aging process, cured diseases that only a few centicycles ago had been deemed impossible by the greater scientific community. I have pushed the limits of what it means to be alive, and spearheaded… my legacy.
Project Cyrus.
Some say my work is damaging the balance of a universe created in the image of a greater power, but that is reasoning for the weak. I am simply making it perfect.
Now, as I gaze out from the ship’s bridge and watch the multitude of stars, each brilliant point sustenance for the orbiting biospheres around it, I realize how close we are to a breakthrough. Not just for me and my team, but for the Federation.
The ship’s computer suddenly beeps, and I jolt out of my reverie.
“Sustainable orbit achieved. Planet identified: Earth. Spatial coordinates are as follows,” it says in a crystal clear female voice. A list of complicated schematics dictating everything from current gravity to the efficiency of the life-support system flash around me as technicians (all human, of course) scurry to check for anomalies. Weaklings, all of them. How little they understand of the Galaxy, beyond their precious screens and data protocols.
I stay at the viewport. Below me lie the ship’s defences, plasma turrets and shield generators are hidden by smooth metal plating, catching and reflecting light from this planetary system’s star. This is where it all began for me, so many years ago…
But I have a job to do. My homeworld can wait, for now.
I spare one last glance at it, curving expanse of mottled brown against the Sol’s radiant background. It had been so beautiful, last time. I hoped to change that. I turn away, striding past the technicians still swarming around screens and cables like so many insects, and the pneumatic door hisses slightly before retracting into the wall.
Project Cyrus calls.
My life’s work all comes down to the success of this experiment. It’s not a question, not really. I will succeed. I must.
The door I arrive at is unmarked, but I know it is the correct one. It looks exactly like all of the other residency blocks in this corridor, but I know otherwise. Great things are happening behind this door. After a retina scan, voice analysis, DNA verification and finally a brainwave scan, I am admitted to a dark room. This entire battleship is Federation-funded for my genetics research, but there’s nothing like a little paranoia to keep away those certain… untrustworthy individuals. I doubt the Federation would approve of this particular expenditure, another reason why success is so critical.
“Welcome, Dr. Cyrus,” a male voice says as panels light up along the walls. “We’ve been expecting you.” A white-coated young man shows me to a window overlooking a sunken room. There are many more people in this room, all wearing silver hazard suits. It is critical that nothing is contaminated in this room.
/
Lives are at stake here.
Chapter 1: The Price Of A Legacy: show
My voice sounds tinny, far away. I knew this moment was near, but seeing the boss himself, the driving force behind the entire operation, somehow makes the reality so much more overwhelming. Dr. Cyrus studies me with a curious, penetrating stare as a shiver runs up my spine. I suddenly feel light-headed as the full impact of this meeting sets in. If he is disappointed…
It’s too late now. We all knew the risks associated with this project, and what he demanded of us. The thought does nothing to calm my nerves.
Dr. Cyrus turns away from me to watch the activity in the sunken room, and I release an anxious breath. Do I continue? Elaborate? Let someone else take my place?
“May I see them?” he asks. “How many?”
My voice catches. “Five hundred and eight. Fifty-six didn’t survive the first division. Mortality rates are dropping. Four hundred and thirty-seven at three sequences. Three decimal seventeen sequences and counting, sir.” He relaxes slightly; at least, I think so. After all, an experiment of this size has never been attempted, with or without Federation approval, anywhere in the Galaxy’s recorded history. The odds are better than predicted, at any rate.
Without waiting for a guide, Dr. Cyrus strides briskly to the only other door in the room. The urgency in his movements is palpable, and with good cause. The future is taking place right in front of us, and I’ve got a front row seat. Will it be a better future, when we’re done?
The door retracts sideways, brainwave scanners clearly convinced that Dr. Cyrus is indeed who he says he is. Of course it’s convinced. DNA can be made to lie- we proved that a mere 3.19 sequences ago- but brainwaves can’t. Even genetically identical twins fool themselves into making the same fundamental mistake: they perceive themselves as different, and their brains mirror that. The future is uncertain.
I find myself in a hazard suit in the sunken room, following in the wake of several other suited figures moving purposefully toward the back. The tinted visors prevent me from seeing their faces, but the only one who interests me is the one leading the pack, straight-backed and determined. We pass more suited figures at rectangular storage units along the walls. Some are removing canisters from the units, some are writing on clipboards, but all are expectant.
Dr. Cyrus is the first to arrive at a storage unit marked 37. He deftly reaches for a canister similar to the ones some of the other staff were inspecting.
“It’s alive?” Everyone is watching now. Nobody says anything; nobody needs to.
The canister twists out of its storage unit. He enters a code on the keypad near its end, it splits in half to reveal a brilliantly bright white light illuminating a single drop of transparent liquid on a clear glass sheet, perfectly equidistant from the two halves of the canister. Suspended within the drop and illuminated by the blinding light is a tiny speck barely visible to the naked eye.
--------------------------------------------------------
This is the moment I’ve waited for my entire life. It’s beautiful, in a serene way. Perhaps a lesser man would not have found the sight so intriguing, but this tiny speck and its four hundred thirty-six surviving twins are my life’s work: I, Korin Cyrus, have created superior life.
--------------------------------------------------------
Duyn was, by most standards, a pretty intimidating creature. At just above four feet tall she was smaller than most of the Galaxy’s intelligent life, but she was in fact the only non-human on board and could tear most organisms clean in half without breaking a sweat. A self-trained, self-sufficient weapons expert, she could dissect and reassemble over 80% of the Federation’s production weaponry, and, given a few decacycles, could turn virtually anything into a war machine. Unsurprisingly, it’s thanks to her that we’re still alive- she had needed reliable men, and it was better than perishing in poverty once the mines of Carkor dried up. At least this way, maybe we’d make a difference. The irony is cruel.
In terms of physique though, Duyn was not someone to take lightly. Her pale blue skin, characteristic of the largely water-dwelling Onein people, glistens slightly as she pulls the ship around to face Cyrus’s. Muscles tense with inhuman strength beneath the razor-sharp ridges of bone on her forearms, developed from a youth spent hunting in the great oceans of Onei. Not that she needed to resort to violence, her intellect and cunning were weapons in themselves; weapons I could see lurking in her impassive eyes. Cold and graphite grey, almond-shaped, slanted, and larger than any human’s, they reflect his impressive and surely lethal array of lasers. She takes it all in slowly, and, I can tell, nervously. One of her three fingered hands has slipped away from the ship’s manual control and curled around her modified F-3 Ion rifle. It was a comfort thing.
I glance around the weaponized cargo ship’s singular room at the only other member of our one-way expedition, a stocky blonde male. We hadn’t known each other prior to Duyn’s recruitment; now, barely eighteen cycles later, we’re sharing silent farewells over the thermonuclear bomb she had assembled to end this once and for all. United in death, there would be no coming back even assuming the hastily constructed shields did manage to withstand Cyrus’s firepower. An explosive of this size could destroy a small moon. Luckily, the only planet that might possibly fall within the blast radius was the sickly brown Earth below. Those who had stayed behind were as good as dead on their dying homeworld.
Duyn swivels the chair around to face us as she pulls on a Federation-class helmet. I knew she hated the thing; while Oneins have no hair, the helmet refused to accommodate the four tentacles so crucial to the radar-like navigation sense used in the dark, underwater caverns of her homeworld. Still, the helmet could be linked to the ship’s onboard sensors and relay a stream of infrared, X-ray and diagnostics scan data to the pilot, vital information during the attack. Comfort can wait a few more minutes.
Her steely eyes suddenly don’t seem so cold anymore. “It is armed?” she asks in English, her warbling voice stumbling slightly over the language. Slow nods around the room. There is truly no turning back now. Her lips pull back into the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen from her; there is no joy in it. The helmet’s visor slides out to obscure her face, she opens a communication channel on the plasma screen above the viewport, and we wait for death.
--------------------------------------------------------
It’s curious to note that of all the species we used for testing, only those cloned from a human genotype had survived with anything approaching success.
Not that genetic modification is a new science. For centicycles genetic therapy has been used to treat diseases, and even to regrow damaged tissue. A human suffering from spinal trauma can be up and walking in as little as seven cycles. A “permanent” dismemberment can be reversed, with no loss of the patient’s motor control.
Assuming the DNA patterns used for treatment originate within the same species of the patient, that is. A pattern from any other species will still manifest itself in most cases, at least to some degree, but the result is always dysfunctional. That fact hasn’t prevented bioforms across the Galaxy from dumping money on useless aesthetic “touchups,” adding to their genetic structure a tail maybe, or perhaps a set of wings. It’s radical cosmetic surgery for the sole purpose of physical appeal. Poor fools. A fully formed brain is simply unable to cope with the new nerve connections granted by such alterations. To me, it’s nothing less than mutilation.
Project Cyrus intended, and succeeded, in changing that. By altering DNA right from the beginning, my team has replicated one of the greatest miracles of the universe. This time… it will be perfect.
The ship’s cool AI voice cuts off my reflections as a communication screen flashes to life back in the first chamber. “Incoming transmission from unidentified vessel. Repeat: incoming transmission.” Instantly, all feelings of success vanish. Icy fear replaces it. Only two other people have the communication ID for this ship, both former colleagues, both dangerous. I thought I had taken care of them… Perhaps I underestimated.
Almost everyone is clustered around the screen when I arrive, waiting. Clearly, they’ve arrived at the same conclusion.
“Computer,” I address, “Allow.”
One word, with devastating consequences. The screen flashes black for an instant, then brightens to reveal a small room. Two humans crouch next to a device of some kind in the distance. Curious, but not an immediate threat. The alien in the pilot’s seat… well…
“Duyn.” Even with the helmet hiding her face, there’s no mistaking that adamant stance, or the belts of weaponry hanging from her slight frame. Determined, and intelligent… a deadly combination. Even so, she had been a mere pawn in my greater undertakings.
She retracts the visor, revealing granite eyes full of hate. “Cyrus.” Even with her Onein accent, it sounds more like a hiss than my name. “It’s gone too far. This isn’t what I signed up for.” Of course she would disapprove of the project, that was the reason she needed to be eliminated. I hadn’t came this far only to be betrayed. No… for the good of the Galaxy, I could not fail.
Fear threatens to overwhelm reason. If exile to the war-torn mines of Carkor hadn’t finished her, there was an excellent chance retribution would follow.
Inhale, exhale. Outwardly calm and composed, I continue.
“If you had known, you would have never agreed to the project. Can’t you see I’m only trying to make a better universe, for us all? What’s one lie, when weighted against an improved standard of living for everyone? Besides, even you should appreciate the benefits of your contributions- these children will have the muscle tone and stamina of an Onien hunter. It’s really all thanks to you… dear.”
She flinches at the word “dear;” I’m only making her angrier. Baring pointed teeth, she continues at a scream. “You monster! One lie? Those… those things you’ve made are unnatural freaks! You claim to be working for the good of society, by undermining Federation law, by toying with life? You don’t deserve to live… Qran is dead because of you, and you tried to kill me. You’re a man of reason, Cyrus, doesn’t a life for a life sound fair?”
Despite the death threats, I can only focus on how much I hate her voice. A phlegmatic shriek, like a drowning man attempting to talk underwater.
She turns around, and nods to the two humans still kneeling next to the device behind her. “Detonate. Now.”
Realization sets in. I have underestimated her… perhaps fatally. “Kill her,” I say as fear gives way to full-fledged panic. “KILL HER!”
The ship computer takes only nanoseconds to activate, aim, and fire a deadly barrage at her vessel.
--------------------------------------------------------
We’re thrown to the floor as a massive impact rocks the ship. Time seems to slow down elastically. Cyrus’s demented yell rings with an intensity to match the explosion of colors outside the viewport. “DAMN YOU, KILL HER!”
Of us all, only Duyn has managed to stay in her seat. She’s facing us, whispering softly. I barely hear the words.
“May you find safe waters in the Beyond.”
It’s strangely beautiful, superimposed against the chaos outside. After mere seconds, the protective energy barrier surrounding our ship falters and a single laser slices diagonally upward, tearing through spacecraft and bomb alike.
Far above Earth, the explosion is tremendous.
It’s too late now. We all knew the risks associated with this project, and what he demanded of us. The thought does nothing to calm my nerves.
Dr. Cyrus turns away from me to watch the activity in the sunken room, and I release an anxious breath. Do I continue? Elaborate? Let someone else take my place?
“May I see them?” he asks. “How many?”
My voice catches. “Five hundred and eight. Fifty-six didn’t survive the first division. Mortality rates are dropping. Four hundred and thirty-seven at three sequences. Three decimal seventeen sequences and counting, sir.” He relaxes slightly; at least, I think so. After all, an experiment of this size has never been attempted, with or without Federation approval, anywhere in the Galaxy’s recorded history. The odds are better than predicted, at any rate.
Without waiting for a guide, Dr. Cyrus strides briskly to the only other door in the room. The urgency in his movements is palpable, and with good cause. The future is taking place right in front of us, and I’ve got a front row seat. Will it be a better future, when we’re done?
The door retracts sideways, brainwave scanners clearly convinced that Dr. Cyrus is indeed who he says he is. Of course it’s convinced. DNA can be made to lie- we proved that a mere 3.19 sequences ago- but brainwaves can’t. Even genetically identical twins fool themselves into making the same fundamental mistake: they perceive themselves as different, and their brains mirror that. The future is uncertain.
I find myself in a hazard suit in the sunken room, following in the wake of several other suited figures moving purposefully toward the back. The tinted visors prevent me from seeing their faces, but the only one who interests me is the one leading the pack, straight-backed and determined. We pass more suited figures at rectangular storage units along the walls. Some are removing canisters from the units, some are writing on clipboards, but all are expectant.
Dr. Cyrus is the first to arrive at a storage unit marked 37. He deftly reaches for a canister similar to the ones some of the other staff were inspecting.
“It’s alive?” Everyone is watching now. Nobody says anything; nobody needs to.
The canister twists out of its storage unit. He enters a code on the keypad near its end, it splits in half to reveal a brilliantly bright white light illuminating a single drop of transparent liquid on a clear glass sheet, perfectly equidistant from the two halves of the canister. Suspended within the drop and illuminated by the blinding light is a tiny speck barely visible to the naked eye.
--------------------------------------------------------
This is the moment I’ve waited for my entire life. It’s beautiful, in a serene way. Perhaps a lesser man would not have found the sight so intriguing, but this tiny speck and its four hundred thirty-six surviving twins are my life’s work: I, Korin Cyrus, have created superior life.
--------------------------------------------------------
Duyn was, by most standards, a pretty intimidating creature. At just above four feet tall she was smaller than most of the Galaxy’s intelligent life, but she was in fact the only non-human on board and could tear most organisms clean in half without breaking a sweat. A self-trained, self-sufficient weapons expert, she could dissect and reassemble over 80% of the Federation’s production weaponry, and, given a few decacycles, could turn virtually anything into a war machine. Unsurprisingly, it’s thanks to her that we’re still alive- she had needed reliable men, and it was better than perishing in poverty once the mines of Carkor dried up. At least this way, maybe we’d make a difference. The irony is cruel.
In terms of physique though, Duyn was not someone to take lightly. Her pale blue skin, characteristic of the largely water-dwelling Onein people, glistens slightly as she pulls the ship around to face Cyrus’s. Muscles tense with inhuman strength beneath the razor-sharp ridges of bone on her forearms, developed from a youth spent hunting in the great oceans of Onei. Not that she needed to resort to violence, her intellect and cunning were weapons in themselves; weapons I could see lurking in her impassive eyes. Cold and graphite grey, almond-shaped, slanted, and larger than any human’s, they reflect his impressive and surely lethal array of lasers. She takes it all in slowly, and, I can tell, nervously. One of her three fingered hands has slipped away from the ship’s manual control and curled around her modified F-3 Ion rifle. It was a comfort thing.
I glance around the weaponized cargo ship’s singular room at the only other member of our one-way expedition, a stocky blonde male. We hadn’t known each other prior to Duyn’s recruitment; now, barely eighteen cycles later, we’re sharing silent farewells over the thermonuclear bomb she had assembled to end this once and for all. United in death, there would be no coming back even assuming the hastily constructed shields did manage to withstand Cyrus’s firepower. An explosive of this size could destroy a small moon. Luckily, the only planet that might possibly fall within the blast radius was the sickly brown Earth below. Those who had stayed behind were as good as dead on their dying homeworld.
Duyn swivels the chair around to face us as she pulls on a Federation-class helmet. I knew she hated the thing; while Oneins have no hair, the helmet refused to accommodate the four tentacles so crucial to the radar-like navigation sense used in the dark, underwater caverns of her homeworld. Still, the helmet could be linked to the ship’s onboard sensors and relay a stream of infrared, X-ray and diagnostics scan data to the pilot, vital information during the attack. Comfort can wait a few more minutes.
Her steely eyes suddenly don’t seem so cold anymore. “It is armed?” she asks in English, her warbling voice stumbling slightly over the language. Slow nods around the room. There is truly no turning back now. Her lips pull back into the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen from her; there is no joy in it. The helmet’s visor slides out to obscure her face, she opens a communication channel on the plasma screen above the viewport, and we wait for death.
--------------------------------------------------------
It’s curious to note that of all the species we used for testing, only those cloned from a human genotype had survived with anything approaching success.
Not that genetic modification is a new science. For centicycles genetic therapy has been used to treat diseases, and even to regrow damaged tissue. A human suffering from spinal trauma can be up and walking in as little as seven cycles. A “permanent” dismemberment can be reversed, with no loss of the patient’s motor control.
Assuming the DNA patterns used for treatment originate within the same species of the patient, that is. A pattern from any other species will still manifest itself in most cases, at least to some degree, but the result is always dysfunctional. That fact hasn’t prevented bioforms across the Galaxy from dumping money on useless aesthetic “touchups,” adding to their genetic structure a tail maybe, or perhaps a set of wings. It’s radical cosmetic surgery for the sole purpose of physical appeal. Poor fools. A fully formed brain is simply unable to cope with the new nerve connections granted by such alterations. To me, it’s nothing less than mutilation.
Project Cyrus intended, and succeeded, in changing that. By altering DNA right from the beginning, my team has replicated one of the greatest miracles of the universe. This time… it will be perfect.
The ship’s cool AI voice cuts off my reflections as a communication screen flashes to life back in the first chamber. “Incoming transmission from unidentified vessel. Repeat: incoming transmission.” Instantly, all feelings of success vanish. Icy fear replaces it. Only two other people have the communication ID for this ship, both former colleagues, both dangerous. I thought I had taken care of them… Perhaps I underestimated.
Almost everyone is clustered around the screen when I arrive, waiting. Clearly, they’ve arrived at the same conclusion.
“Computer,” I address, “Allow.”
One word, with devastating consequences. The screen flashes black for an instant, then brightens to reveal a small room. Two humans crouch next to a device of some kind in the distance. Curious, but not an immediate threat. The alien in the pilot’s seat… well…
“Duyn.” Even with the helmet hiding her face, there’s no mistaking that adamant stance, or the belts of weaponry hanging from her slight frame. Determined, and intelligent… a deadly combination. Even so, she had been a mere pawn in my greater undertakings.
She retracts the visor, revealing granite eyes full of hate. “Cyrus.” Even with her Onein accent, it sounds more like a hiss than my name. “It’s gone too far. This isn’t what I signed up for.” Of course she would disapprove of the project, that was the reason she needed to be eliminated. I hadn’t came this far only to be betrayed. No… for the good of the Galaxy, I could not fail.
Fear threatens to overwhelm reason. If exile to the war-torn mines of Carkor hadn’t finished her, there was an excellent chance retribution would follow.
Inhale, exhale. Outwardly calm and composed, I continue.
“If you had known, you would have never agreed to the project. Can’t you see I’m only trying to make a better universe, for us all? What’s one lie, when weighted against an improved standard of living for everyone? Besides, even you should appreciate the benefits of your contributions- these children will have the muscle tone and stamina of an Onien hunter. It’s really all thanks to you… dear.”
She flinches at the word “dear;” I’m only making her angrier. Baring pointed teeth, she continues at a scream. “You monster! One lie? Those… those things you’ve made are unnatural freaks! You claim to be working for the good of society, by undermining Federation law, by toying with life? You don’t deserve to live… Qran is dead because of you, and you tried to kill me. You’re a man of reason, Cyrus, doesn’t a life for a life sound fair?”
Despite the death threats, I can only focus on how much I hate her voice. A phlegmatic shriek, like a drowning man attempting to talk underwater.
She turns around, and nods to the two humans still kneeling next to the device behind her. “Detonate. Now.”
Realization sets in. I have underestimated her… perhaps fatally. “Kill her,” I say as fear gives way to full-fledged panic. “KILL HER!”
The ship computer takes only nanoseconds to activate, aim, and fire a deadly barrage at her vessel.
--------------------------------------------------------
We’re thrown to the floor as a massive impact rocks the ship. Time seems to slow down elastically. Cyrus’s demented yell rings with an intensity to match the explosion of colors outside the viewport. “DAMN YOU, KILL HER!”
Of us all, only Duyn has managed to stay in her seat. She’s facing us, whispering softly. I barely hear the words.
“May you find safe waters in the Beyond.”
It’s strangely beautiful, superimposed against the chaos outside. After mere seconds, the protective energy barrier surrounding our ship falters and a single laser slices diagonally upward, tearing through spacecraft and bomb alike.
Far above Earth, the explosion is tremendous.
Chapter 2: My Friends Have Never Lived: show
Full version coming soon!
/10 
Made by LordFalcon 
