in the Fold. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for a catalyst.
Waiting for her.
We are Cat. Cat is us. And so we know that the skins called Finian and Zila are upstairs, setting the reactor to implode rather than see Aurora consumed. If we have her, we have the means to find the Eshvaren’s weapon. If we have her, we have the only one who can operate it. Who knows what we are, and where we sleep, and how we might be stopped.
If we have her, we have the galaxy.
“Cat?”
The skin named Tyler speaks. The apex in the folly of their hierarchy, looking at us from near the window. He is alone.
All of them.
So unimaginably alone.
“That’s not Cat anymore,” Aurora whispers.
We strike. Moving with the many skins we have embraced since first the Octavia colonists stumbled upon us, deep beneath the planet’s mantle. We writhe. We bend. We flow. The one called Kaliis is our primary objective—Aurora’s protector. The vines and leaves snake out, grasping, thorned and barbed. We are many, he is one. And though he is our better in this nascent state, we need only put the slightest tear in his biosuit and he will be ours.
He knows. He flows and crashes like water. The other members of the squad break into frantic motion. The Scarlett-skin raises her weapon. We slap it aside. The Finian-skin and Zila-skin upstairs cry out as we strike, ripping the tools from their hands. Wrapping them all in twisted fronds and blankets of flowers.
The Tyler-skin stands paralyzed. Seeing only what the Cat-skin was. Unable to see what she has become.
More.
“Cat, stop it!”
Outside, the Princeps-skin raises its arms. Our growths on the reactor building shiver. Grasp. Pull. The concrete in the structure shudders and groans, the cracks spread. The electrical current that the Finian-skin has sent through the metal crackles and burns us. But we are many—the cooked and blackened pieces of us falling away, only to be replaced by more. The building splits, the walls parting, the roof peeling back. The skin-things scream as the structure is torn away in showers of concrete dust and the shriek of dead metal.
The gantries tumble.
The shell collapses.
The floor drops away beneath them.
But they do not fall.
“No.”
The Aurora-skin floats upon the air. Right eye glowing white. Arms outstretched. The light from her burns us. The power of the Eshvaren thrums inside her. Just a fraction of its true potential.
But so sharp.
So bright.
We lash out at her—the Cat-skin, the Princeps-skin, the agent-skin, the many forms we have subsumed and embraced in our time here. She fights back with shock waves of psychic rage, tearing the pieces of us away, ripping our grasping tendrils from her friend-skins and bringing them softly to the ground.
But fierce as she is, the power in her is only newly wakened. She has no understanding of its extent. No comprehension of what she might become. And she is one.
We are many.
Too many.
We hit her. Grasp her. Claw her. The disruptor fire from her friend-skins are but summer rain against our totality. For every piece they burn away, another rises in its place. Gestalt. Myriad. Hydra.
And she looks at us, our ancient foe shining behind her eyes.
And she begs.
“Cat, help me!”
We laugh. Feeling the pulse of psychic energy she sends into the Cat-skin’s mind. But embraced and loved, encompassed in the warmth of singularity, in the living, breathing completeness inside us, there is no Cat anymore.
There is only Ra’haam.
… but
then …
…
… No.
NO.
•••••
I’m nothing.
I’m everything.
I’m we.
But though it’s inside me now
hopelessly intertwined with almost everything I was
there’s still a tiny ember in a darkened corner
that’s
still
me.
I’m back in the flight simulator at the academy. The day I graduated into the Ace stream. Reaching out into the network all around me, moving faster than they can target me. I can hear the voices of the other cadets in my head. The cheers growing louder as my kill tally mounts, weaving through the mossy hands that clutch and grasp me, trying to hold me back.
I take hold of it. Squeezing tight. Holding all of it—Princeps, the other agent, the chimps, the colonists, the tendrils, all of them still. There’s so many of them. It’s so big. So much. So heavy.
And I look around at them, through the eyes I know will only be mine for a few moments longer before my ember goes out forever.
These people who were my family. These people who were my friends. Sharp Auri and quiet Zila and snarky Fin and brooding Kal and smooth