Even with the welcome reunion, the days that followed were nothing if not tense.

After Skipper brought Dragan back to the basement floors, he received three more hugs -- an excited glomp from Serena that nearly knocked him over, a businesslike pat on the back from Bruno, and a bear-hug from Ruth that nearly killed him for real. Dragan had never been one for emotional displays like this, but the situation didn't really give him a choice. It was only when he explained the circumstances of his survival that the other members of the crew paused.

In one of the far-flung storage rooms in the basement, Dragan told his story to them and only them. There wasn't as much scepticism as he'd expected, to be honest.

"So," Ruth summarised once his verbal essay had come to an end. "What? You're like one of those Repurposed now?"

"Kind of, I guess," Dragan sighed, taking a welcome rest in a stray plastic chair. "But kind of different at the same time. Like… two strains of the same disease, you know? Similar symptoms, but not exactly the same."

Someone else piped up: "I'm not disease, dead boy! Rude! Do not say this!"

Dragan sighed, ignoring the interruption -- and at the sight of that, Skipper raised an eyebrow. "Was that your, uh, your new buddy, then?"

"Yep," Dragan said. "You can't hear her, but she's always talking. Inside my head, like I've got a direct connection. I'm not crazy, seriously."

Bruno, leaning against the wall, shifted slightly.

"Nah," he muttered. "Nah, we believe you. It's just… we seriously thought you were dead."

Dragan looked down at his hands, shaking on his lap. "I… think I was dead, at least for a while. Head blown off -- that's usually fatal. I've started wondering a little, um, if I'm actually me -- or if I'm just a copy of me the Panacea grew from what was left. Did I die? Am I dead?"

Ruth took a step forward, placed a reassuring hand on Dragan's shoulder -- and when he looked up at her, he could see that tears were trailing down her face.

"You're here," she whispered. "I can see you. I can feel your heartbeat through my hand. That isn't dead."

Slowly, Dragan nodded, a slight smile on his face. He supposed these weren't the kind of questions you got answers to.

Bruno cleared his throat. "So -- this, uh, Pan. Can you see her right now?"

Dragan nodded again, his gaze drifting to the top of a nearby shelf -- where the mushroom girl herself was sitting, legs swinging carefree.

"Has she told you what she wants?" Bruno asked. "I mean, she's in your head… but why? For how long?"

"Hey," Dragan called up to Pan. "Bruno wants to know --"

Pan suddenly stopped swinging her legs, looking down at him with a sheer scowl. "I heard this, dead boy! I am not deaf girl! I need to stay inside your thinkings until I can become."

Skipper, sitting backwards in his own chair, exchanged a pair of quizzical glances with Ruth and Bruno.

"Uh," he tugged at his collar. "I'm guessing she's saying something to you now, then?"

Dragan sighed. "She says that she's not deaf and that she needs to stay inside my mind until she can 'become'."

Ruth frowned. "What's that mean? Become what?"

"I think…" Dragan paused, waiting for Pan's nod of approval. "I think it means taking back control of the planet's Panacea, somehow. Imagine there's two minds controlling it, like the two halves of the brain -- right now, the angry Pan is dominating. This Pan is going to use me like a transmission tower, and take back control. I think. Is that right?"

"That's right, dead boy!"

"She says that's right."

Skipper leaned over his chair, resting his chin on his arms. "Well, that's great," he grinned. "That's just fantastic. Solves every problem at once -- the Repurposed, the Dead Hand, being stuck in this place. Couldn't ask for better luck."

Shifting flesh. Growing eyes. The human form made jigsaw puzzle. Dragan's gaze turned back to the floor, and his blood ran cold in his veins. Just the memory was enough to unsettle him.

"Doesn't solve all our problems," he quietly muttered.

Bruno took a deep breath -- and asked again the question that had been repeated so many times.

"You're absolutely sure of what you saw? Titan Hessiah is a…" he lowered his voice to a hush. "... Gene Tyrant?"

Dragan gulped. "That's what I saw. His body was changing just like that -- but not like one of the Repurposed."

Bruno's worried expression shifted into Serena's worried expression, which was subtly different around the eyebrows. Even so, her voice was chirpy as ever as she spoke up. "But they've been gone for, like, billions of years, Mr. Dragan," she exclaimed. "Maybe you were just hallucinating or something because you were so scared?"

"I wasn't hallucinating," Dragan said flatly, before glancing at Pan. "Okay, well, yes, I was hallucinating, but not about that. Guy's a Gene Tyrant. One-hundred percent."

Skipper scratched the growing stubble on his chin. "Explains why they're blocking communications off the planet, then. Ol' Titan Hessiah must be up to something -- and he doesn't want the authorities finding out about it until he's done. Hell, maybe he's behind the whole Repurposed thing himself."

"Blocking communications?" Dragan furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"Before you got back, we had a little talk with a contact down here in the camps. A planet as important as this couldn't go dark this long without someone taking notice."

Dragan's mind filled in the blanks, and he nodded. "So ExoCorp must be sending out signals telling people that everything's okay. That's why no rescues showed up."

Over in the corner, Ruth growled, fingers scratching at her arm irritably. "So they're just letting all these people sit down here, waiting for help that's not coming. Pisses me off."

"What a coincidence," Skipper chuckled. "It pisses me off too. Seems to me we need to do something about it. So, ah…" He scanned the group with his eyes. "...who's up for taking down a god?"

"Easier said than done," Bruno muttered, tapping his foot. "If it comes down to it, I don't think I could fight the Repurposed, security and a Gene Tyrant. Hell, I don't think I could fight a Gene Tyrant period."

Skipper clicked his tongue. "Well, we can't just wait here, yeah? Things'll just get worse the longer we sit around like sad sacks."

The hallucinatory Pan dropped down off the shelf, falling through the floor entirely before slowly rising back up. There was a wide grin on her face, like she was enjoying being in the midst of all this.

"No, green man!" she cried happily, almost triumphantly. "No, won't get worse! Tell them, dead boy!"

Dragan sighed. "Actually, Pan says it won't get worse."

"How come?" Ruth frowned.

"Because," Pan put her fists to her hips smugly, holding her head high. "In three days, I will become! Then there are no Repurposed! Then it is easy time! Tell them, dead boy! Tell them, fucko!"

Dragan echoed her words, but even as he did his mouth felt dry and hollow.

Three days. Three days of Pan festering inside his head, and then all this would end. But that put him in more danger than ever.

Because, to the other Pan, he was the person she needed to kill the very most.

----------------------------------------

"I'm going to be assisting with repair efforts near the breach," Atoy's voice came over the communicator. "Once it's sealed, we'll be able to protect those down below once again. Will you be meeting me along the way, Officer Hazzard?"

Marie clicked her tongue in regret, putting a finger to her ear as she strode down the hallway. "Sorry, I can't," she said. "I'm a little busy."

"Oh." The disappointment in Atoy's voice was obvious. "I see."

"I'm following up on your Hessiah suspicions," she went on, assuaging her own guilt through words and words. "Gonna talk to him, see what I can pry out of him."

"Of course. I, ah…"

Silence lingered over the communicator for a moment, and Marie hesitated outside the door to Hessiah's lab. "Atoy?"

"Nevermind. Good luck to you." Muzazi's words were hurried.

There was a click as the call was terminated, and Marie frowned to herself. An undeniable distance had begun to grow between the two of them over the last few days, and Marie didn't know how to bridge it again. No… no, that wasn't true at all. She knew exactly how to correct it, but she was simply unwilling to do it.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She just had to tell him about the other Gene Tyrant. About Titan Hessiah, truly called Ranavalona, and the plans he had in store. About the Enfant creatures that would soon pour over the galaxy like a flood.

She could tell him. It would be as simple as opening her mouth and letting the words fall out. But she had promised Hessiah she'd keep his secret --

-- and a promise to her own kind would always trump any petty human friendship.

It wasn't as if she wasn't doing her best for Muzazi, anyway. When it came down to it, and Hessiah enacted his plans, Marie was sure she could keep her partner alive by vouching for him. Hessiah clearly had a chip on his shoulder when it came to humanity, but she had no doubt he would listen to her.

She was the first thing like him he'd seen in a thousand years, after all. He had no choice but to love her.

And she…

She placed her hand against the palm-reader, and the light above beeped green, allowing her passage. As she stepped through, the door closed again behind her. The entrance to Hessiah's lab was like an airlock, secondary and tertiary scans washing over her like a rainstorm for a moment before finally confirming her identity. The second door opened, finally letting her through.

Hessiah had taken on an unusual form today -- stationary, orange and brown, like a cross between a great tree and some kind of crustacean. Twitching, thin limbs like the legs of a spider tapped away at the holographic displays around him.

"I've been thinking about destiny today," his voice echoed from deep within his body, warped by strange passages. "Is that something you believe in, Marie?"

Marie glanced around the lab. The vats were visible today, and all four of the Enfant were staring keenly at them. Their bulbous fleshy bodies pulsed and quivered in the sterile light -- grotesque enough that Marie had to look away again. Intelligence grew like a slow fire in their eyes.

She shrugged. "The way I see it," she replied. "Everything just comes down to random chance."

Hessiah didn't say anything else straight away -- not until a humanoid torso, pink like a worm, squirmed out from beneath two plates of carapace. He looked at Marie through its eyes.

"Well, of course it does," Hessiah said, voice now clear. "But that's no reason that destiny should not exist. 'Random chance', as you put it, is just the dance of numbers in the end -- and numbers are not so complex that they cannot be predicted."

Marie raised an eyebrow, sitting down on an available chair. "What? You're saying you can predict that, then?"

The boundless confidence she'd always seen in her fellow Gene Tyrant -- well, Gene Noble, she supposed -- faltered just a little, and for a second he appeared almost meek.

"Well, not I," he muttered. "But it was said that the greatest of us could calculate the years to come, could optimise their consciousnesses to such a degree that they could predict events down to the slightest detail. Lord Director Eve saw everything, it was said, past and future."

"Didn't see the Revolution coming, I guess."

For a single grim moment, Marie thought she had gone too far -- and the split-second pinprick glance Hessiah shot her seemed to confirm that. Then, however, his gaze calmed down, slid down his face slightly, and he smiled.

"Oh, but that's where you're wrong," he purred. "I've now come to believe that the Lord Director most certainly saw this coming."

His body cracked as his shape changed, shell shattering and softening into white sludge which then resolidified into sheer muscle. He placed an armoured hand against the nearest vat, and the Enfant contained within writhed delightfully in response.

"In the proper days," he murmured. "All great efforts were to be personally approved by the Lord Director. My venture beyond our borders was one of them. At the time, I believed this to be a means to rid the court of me, to cast me aside for the sake of baseless accusations… but no."

Once again, he'd drifted off to indignities past. Marie bit her lip. "No?"

"What if I was sent away because that was where I needed to be?" His hope was almost feverish. "By definition, the prodigal son must be lost in order to return, must he not? Perhaps I was chosen to be right here, right now… to do this. Destiny, you see?"

He turned to look at Marie, and the grin on his face was so earnest that she had to look away.

"You see?" he said again, waiting for a response.

"Well, what about me?" she asked quietly, one hand gripping her forearm, looking down at the floor. "I just got by here by… coincidence. Where do I come into things?"

Heavy hands settled over her shoulders, the blazing heat beneath their skin a kind of reassurance, if a burning and overbearing one.

"All present events stem from past events," he said gently, as if comforting a child. "All chance stems from previous chance. If my coming here could be foretold, then yours could too. There can be no fellowship without companions -- and you, my dear, are mine."

If circumstances on top of circumstances had led them here, then did their decisions really matter? No matter what she did here, no matter what she said or didn't say, was she at fault? If all life was numbers building atop numbers, then nobody could blame her for…

For…

Marie Hazzard looked up.

----------------------------------------

Marie didn't talk to Muzazi for the rest of the day. By the time she'd finally left Hessiah to his grand plans and his Enfant, her partner -- well, her associate, really -- had retired for the night. All there was for her to do was to lay on her own bed, her hands behind her head as a pillow, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling.

The questions piled up.

What would happen, tomorrow? What would happen, next week? Next month? Next year? For most of her hundred years of living, Marie had been sure of where she'd stood in the world. Even under the boot of the Supremacy, she'd known where the winds would take her.

Now her freedom lay right in front of her -- and beyond it, she could think of nothing but an endless void. Hessiah's plan would change history forever. If things went his way, it would be beyond even the Thousand Revolutions. Hell, with the Enfant, it could even be the rise of a new species entirely.

What would that be like, she wondered? Was that a future she wanted to be free in?

Hessiah had said, hadn't he, that some Gene Tyrants could calculate the future? That they could optimise their brains to calculate and predict?

Marie closed her eyes.

It wasn't exactly new territory -- predicting the events of a battle was simple for her, something she did without even thinking about it. That was calculating only seconds ahead, sure, but she imagined the same principle applied. The only difference between a second and a year was processing power.

And she was sure she could get plenty of that.

Marie took a deep breath in the moment before her lungs stopped existing. They, along with the rest of her innards, converted into new neural matter -- lobes and neurons, spreading out like a great pink blanket. Before long, she resembled little more than a massive pile of pink mush, spilling slightly over the sides of the bed. She maintained only the tiniest organs to maintain her life, and…

And she thought.

And she imagined.

And she saw.

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One year later…

Azum-Ha, capital planet of the Supremacy, was a world of two layers.

Below, the tombs and ancient temples of the first generation spread out as a frozen expanse, hallowed stone paused mid-crumble by the constant efforts of repair automatics. This was history preserved, all the way from the days of First Supreme Tazir to those of Renée the Raven, who had abandoned the ground of the new homeworld.

Above, the flying cities of the modern era soared -- great white constructs, each fit to fill millions, manoeuvring their way over the planet like the scattered pieces of a puzzle. White sunlight reflected eagerly off the towers and villas, making each city look like an abode of the gods.

With the coming of the Enfant, however, a third layer had come -- hell.

The Grand Hall of the Body -- an egg-shaped vessel that usually flew higher than any other -- crashed down into the Tomb of the First Supreme in an explosion of dust and steel, the cloud of debris engulfing the neighbouring ruins. The remnants of the defence fleet continued to rain down, like a hailstorm of metal and fuel.

Countless Enfants filled the sky, enough that their numbers blotted out the sun, winding and snarling among the disintegrating fleet. For this battle, they had taken on the forms of leviathanic serpents, their maws stretching down nearly half their body, filled with teeth the size of buildings.

As Marie looked up at one of them, she saw it's jaw squeeze down, crushing the Supremacy warship held there.

All around her, there was music -- a single high note, wavering and stretching in the delirium of battle, but never once breaking. She took in a deep breath, filters within her purifying the air of any toxins, and took in her surroundings.

They descended from the scorched red sky. A thin flying platform took their assembly down to the site of their victory, escorted by two massive insectoid Enfant, their wings moving so fast they didn't even qualify as blurs. The sheer motion all around them would have sent Marie's hair whipping this way and that had she not already hardened it.

In front of her, at the head of their procession, stood the Gene Noble Ranavalona. The Supreme and his ilk had still not been slain, but the capital had been taken, so Ranavalona had declared this a victory -- and he had taken a form befitting it.

He was hulking, massive, with a body of black armour, spikes and spirals winding out of his form. Red feathers hung off him like a cloak, and he tapped the metal beneath him with hooked white claws. He looked forward with seven crowns upon seven heads of seven forms, each a vicious imitation of a predatory beast, visages locked in the ecstasy of bloodshed. Fourteen red eyes, each bearing conjoined pupils, stared in different directions -- taking in the closing of the battle like a patron appreciating a symphony.

Slowly, deliberately, Ranavalona raised the massive sceptre of bone he held in his talons -- and he let loose a resounding and wordless roar of victory. It overpowered all -- the screeches of the Enfant, the explosions and burning of the Supremacy fleet, even the omnipresent music of the planet's surface. If she hadn't been bolstered against such things, Marie had no doubt her eardrums would have burst from being so close to that sound.

Azum-Ha was not quite ready to give up, however.

As the remains of a warship fell down to the planet, the hatches on its side slid open -- and swarms of combat automatics poured forth, flying off in every direction in a vain effort to repel the attack on their territory. Most were quickly eliminated by the surrounding Enfant, but a small cloud rushed in the direction of Ranavalona's platform.

He waved a vague hand to one of his attending insectoids, and it projected a flood of acidic saliva from its mandibles, drowning the majority of the incoming hostiles in dissolution. Inert metal and wire dropped out of the sky, harmless -- save for one surviving drone, an instant away from deactivation, zooming toward Marie. The surviving blade of its armament span rapidly, blade gleaming with promise.

It didn't get far.

With two lightning-fast flashes of white Aether, Zenzanik sliced the machine into four equal pieces. The instant the chunks of the enemy collapsed and slid off the platform, Marie's bodyguard returned to an inert state, slouching over and letting his great cleaver-swords trail over the ground.

Wait. Zenzanik? Who was Zenzanik? Marie scrambled for memories that had not happened yet, and she turned to look at the thing.

Of course. Zenzanik. She couldn’t bear calling him by the same name.

The warrior's long black hair had become greasy and unkempt, gathering in clumps as it whipped this way and that in the wind. After he had been given better ways of seeing, his eyes had atrophied, looking like little more than drained white balloons hanging off his face. Speech was unnecessary for a living weapon, and so his mouth was covered with an expanse of smooth white skin. Muffled, ragged breathing could be heard behind it.

Even as Marie stared at the creature, he did not respond in any way. Of course, that was natural. They'd excised higher brain functions from him long ago, leaving him with only what he needed. And yet… there was something there, still, she felt, deep within him. The cold fire of hatred that you could never see, but sense all the same.

Yes. When Marie Hazzard looked at Atoy Muzazi, she knew without a doubt that he hated her.

She realised what that music was. That constant, high-pitched note.

The world was screaming.

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Wake up!

For a single, terrible moment, Marie thought that she had sunk too deep -- that she had turned herself into little more than a machine for calculation, that she had abandoned the consciousness she needed to wake from that nightmare. That she had become something capable only of imagining the future, without ever being able to enact it.

Perhaps she was nearly right.

It took a burst of utter will, however, but she managed to escape that fate. Neurons and lobes became skin and muscles once again as she forced them free, climbing out of herself like a chick hatching from an egg. Hysteric breathing kept her light-headed and woozy, and she was forced to hold onto the nearest wall to keep herself steady.

That scenery, that burning, that hatred, that betrayal. That was the path she was on right now. That was what lay at the end of the reassurance she'd been so happy for.

Marie held onto her chest, wondering vaguely for a moment if she was even capable of having a heart attack.

Was this the path she’d wanted?