What makes a king a king? Invincibility.

John Blair moved through the dark tunnels of Panacea, lit occasionally only by the glowing wings of a fluttering insect. He kept his helmet off as he walked, eyes flicking around to take in every detail of his surroundings. A few days ago, he'd have been loath to remove his protection on a dangerous planet like this, but since then he'd learnt he had nothing to fear.

He'd learnt there was no such thing as fear.

"Commander?" Pion's voice vibrated through his thoughts, like electricity shaped into words. "Are you nearly done? We need to prepare an ambush outside the ExoCorp building. There are useful parts left from that ship I bombed -- we can use them to form some kind of trap, I think."

Pion, the technical specialist of their crew. Before this whole situation had developed, he'd been far more quiet -- and John had preferred that, to be quite honest. Ever since his elevation, he'd become annoyingly confident. He'd never have dared to tell John Blair what to do.

What makes a king a king? Having someone to rule over. So far, his kingdom was a kingdom of five people, but it would serve. He could see it now, in his mind's eye, like it already existed -- the world that could be built here. A great and undying nation built from Panacea.

John winced as it happened again.

He felt hands on his dreams, wrenching them out of shape, like it was trying to force his ambitions onto a different track. John was stronger than that, however, and he banished the intruder with a burst of will, shattering those foreign fingers and sending them falling into the void.

A king did not accept such impudence.

Even so, however… John found himself coming to a halt. No matter what he did, he couldn't find the effort to continue chasing this pest. Was that his own decision, or had those hands realigned more than he'd known? He found himself questioning that more and more since what had happened.

But if a king questioned, he did not do so aloud. John turned and began coming back the way he came.

"Very well," he sighed through the speech electric. "I am returning now. January wounded him anyway -- he'll bleed out in time. Ian, you're still in place inside?"

"I am, sir. Praise be."

John rolled his eyes at the religious awe. Not all of them had gotten through this unscathed, clearly. He idly rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the reassurance of the cuboid lump there.

At the time, he'd gotten these implants for himself and his team for strategic purposes only -- exterior memory storage, recording their consciousnesses so they could operate efficiently no matter what trauma they were presented with. He couldn't have imagined just how useful they'd end up being. Their brains had been infested by whatever this diseased Panacea was, but their sense of self was preserved by the implants, allowing them to operate independently -- to a degree.

It was irritating, but he still felt the draw to goals not his own, the directives of the orange god pulling him along like strings. For the moment, resisting those objectives was beyond even him.

But only for the moment.

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

Hessiah's head connected back to his neck with a pop as the tendril holding it retracted, but the look on his face didn't change. Tears continued to stream down his face as he looked Marie up and down, his hands planted on her shoulders.

"Oh, oh…" he said again -- but this time his mouth did not move, the words instead vibrating out of his very skin. "Look at you. So alive, such fire… if I had been one of them, I'd have been killed instantly. To think… of which generation are you? What lineage do you hold the body of?"

Marie blinked, looking up at the other Gene Tyrant. His appearance was continuing to shift as she observed him -- his hair retracting into his skull, leaving him bald, an extra pair of red eyes opening beneath his human ones. She was watching someone shed a disguise they'd worn for a long, long time.

She'd never even imagined something like this could happen -- and so the words were clumsy, halting as they came out of her mouth.

"I don't know…" she muttered. "I don't know what that means…"

He leaned in, neck stretching down unnaturally like the branch of a great tree. "Do you recall the time of the Nobility?" he whispered, forked tongue flicking between sharpening fangs. His excitement was causing his body to warp and change. "The age of the last perfect nation? The rulership of Lord Director Eve?"

Marie shook her head slowly. "I… no. I wasn't around for any of that."

He nodded sagely, wiry hair flowing from his chin to form a beard that brushed against the floor. "As I expected," he grunted, taking his hands off her and trotting towards the Enfant vat on hooves of tooth enamel. "If you had been of my generation, no doubt you would have already had your own plans in motion."

He reached out with a spindly arm, each finger as thin as a spider's leg, and caressed the vat.

Marie gulped, stepping forward to stand next to him. She looked up at the hulking figure of the sleeping creature, obscured by the red liquid that bubbled around it.

"What are they for?" she asked, mind scrambling for answers. "The… Enfant, I mean?"

Hessiah sighed through gills that parted on his cheeks. "The Gene Nobility -- we -- were infinitely close to perfection in my time. But infinitely close was not enough. Deficiencies existed, and the traitors made use of them to destroy us."

Marie nodded. "The Thousand Revolutions," she murmured.

A low growl poured out of Hessiah's throat, and as he pulled his hand away from the vat, Marie could see that it was now engorged and grotesque -- its mottled surface covered in horns and claws, winding like spirals. Every time she looked at him, it was like he was in the process of becoming something else.

"The great atrocity," he snarled. "Vermin, ungrateful for the existence they were blessed with, turning against their betters. Resorting to unnatural power because their own abilities were, of course, insufficient. Even now, if I split myself into comrades, how could I trust them not to reveal us? The merest indication of our presence here, and the jealous legions would glass this world. A greater class of being is necessary for continuance, for vengeance!"

He took a deep breath -- and instantly, calm returned to him. He clasped his hands -- once again thin, and now coated in feathers -- behind his back as he spoke almost serenely.

"It bothered me," he said. "That such a thing was possible. That we were vulnerable to such cowardice. The Enfant will not be."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Why not?"

He laughed, the sound genuinely cheerful, a long prehensile tongue swinging from side to side out his mouth like a pendulum. As Marie glanced at it, she saw a human eye was staring at her from its tip.

"Just think about it!" he chuckled. "They will be capable of our own changing, the great flexibility of our cells. They will be immortal, capable of infinite Panacean regeneration. And -- once they are complete -- they will be capable of reproduction, replication of themselves, at such a rate that has never been seen before or will be seen again. A great red tide will spread over this galaxy." The tongue retreated into his mouth, and he smiled thinly with lips of carapace. "And all will be as it once was again."

Marie blinked, and the first time she moved her mouth no sound came out. She'd been around, she'd seen a lot in her time, but this -- dumped on her all at once -- this she had no response to.

No. No, she couldn't lose track here. Her mind reached out for what was important, right now.

"You told your guards to execute the people in the cells," she murmured, looking up at the spindly creature. "Call it off."

Hessiah raised an eyebrow, and as he did his brain began to swell inside his head, his flexible skull stretching to accommodate it. "Hm?"

"Call it off, please."

What else could she do but ask? She was up against a version of herself with vastly more experience, in his own territory. Doubtless he'd set up countermeasures in case violence erupted here. It was what she would have done, after all.

Another arm sprouted from Hessiah's shoulder blade, and it snapped its fingers. "Oh, of course!" he said, stepping away from the vat and lifting his script to a mouth that had parted open on his midsection. "Forgive me, forgive me, but the happy occasion caused me to lose track of the situation. You need me to call off the execution of your servant, then? That's no problem at all. I understand how much work it can be to cultivate good assets -- especially under the current circumstances."

The smart thing to do would be to allow those they'd pursued here to die, but… Marie knew Atoy would insist otherwise. He'd still want answers that he knew wouldn't satisfy him.

To hell with it.

"The others, too," she insisted, stepping forward. "Those that were caught fighting with us. I need them alive, too."

Hessiah frowned, holding his script over his stomach-mouth. Through the open jaws, Marie could see entrails swaying gently like the tendrils of a jellyfish.

"Are you certain?" he asked. "You understand the risk to us both increases the more witnesses there are, don't you? They saw you cut to ribbons, as I recall. You don't think they'll have questions?"

"I've understood that for a hundred years," Marie nodded. "I can keep them quiet. Don't worry."

"So long as you're certain…"

Hessiah turned away from her, his stomach-mouth whispering orders into the script. As he did so, another face sprouted on the back of his head, features warped and stretched by the uneven surface his expanding brain had created.

"By the by," the new face gurgled, a sliver of drool running from its mouth. "Why do you not unburden yourself, sister?"

"Huh?"

"Is that form not claustrophobic for you? So small and limited…" The features faded away into the back of Hessiah's head, and when they reformed their configuration was much more orderly. "Forgive me -- I did not consider your circumstances. If you came into existence after the great fall, then concealment is all you've ever known. For me, this disgrace is a temporary -- if lengthy -- state of affairs. For you, it is the way of things."

If he said so. Marie slowly nodded, mind still racing to catch up to everything that had happened. It was only when Hessiah laughed again that her thoughts were pulled forward to the present moment.

"To think we've spoken this much and I still haven't asked the simplest question!" he chortled, script returning to his pocket as he finished his conversation. "What is your name, my dear? What are you called?"

Well, that was easy enough. "Marie. Marie Hazzard."

"Charmed," Hessiah smiled with all his mouths. "I am called Ranavalona. We will do great work together."

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

Atoy Muzazi narrowed his eyes as the squad of guards came into the detainment room, rifles held in their hands. There was the gruff-looking leader of the security forces, the one who'd initially brought them here, and two others -- with the one they'd left to guard them, that made four.

Ordinarily, four opponents of this caliber would be nothing -- but without his Aether, and without Luminescence, it wasn't quite as easy.

His hands were bound, but he was fairly confident that if one of the guards came too close he could get his legs around their neck and choke them into unconsciousness. From there, it would be a matter of using that guard as a human shield to deflect enemy fire while he got the Neverwire off his wrists. He'd then grab Luminescence, dispatch the remaining three, find Marie, and abscond from this place as soon as possible.

He could see now that Marie has been right about all this -- coming here had been nothing but a huge error in judgement. And now that Dragan Hadrien was dead, he had no reason to linger. The answers he'd sought had already fallen into the darkness.

Muzazi glanced at the other two in their cells. The man called Skipper and Yakob del Sed. If it came down to it, there was a possibility they could cooperate to escape this prison, but he wasn't willing to bet on it. Their past conflicts had left far too much bitterness in the air.

He turned back to the approaching guards, rising to his feet. In this situation, he would have to rely on himself. If nothing else, it would be a fight to remember.

The lead guard stopped mid-step, putting a finger to the communicator on his ear -- and his expression twisted in distaste. With a click of his tongue, he slung his rifle over his back once again.

"Orders from the boss," he grunted, his disappointment evident. "You're all free to go."

Ah, Muzazi thought. That was easier than he'd anticipated.

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

Dragan panted, doing his best to wipe the copious sweat from his brow with a shaking, faltering hand. His new fingers felt foreign at the end of his hand -- like cold ice that had been glued there. These fingers belonged to someone else.

He was slumped over, back against the rocky wall of the cave, his ragged breathing echoing throughout the stone space. Obviously, the guy called John wasn't still coming after him at this point -- locating him would’ve been pathetically easy now.

What was happening to him? First his fingers growing back, and now this fever crawling over his skin like a swarm of hungry insects. He was like John, clearly, infected by whatever this tainted Panacea was -- but how? Why wasn't he running around snarling like one of the maniacs from White Village?

"Dead boy's still thinking dead," murmured Anne sympathetically, kneeling by his side. "Got to be thinking alive, dead boy. Else brain goes fucky. Okay?"

When had she gotten off his back? No matter how much Dragan rifled through his mind, he couldn't find the memory. Something wasn't right. Something wasn't right at all, but he couldn't think what it was -- a heavy fog had descended upon his mind, making every effort sluggish and indistinct.

It was like trying to swim in a dream, and finding that the water around you had become as thick as tar.

"I…" he mumbled, not knowing what he was trying to say. "I…?"

Anne frowned, jagged bangs hanging over her eyes. "Dead boy's not dead," she said, more insistently. "Don't be thinking it, okay? Just don't be dead, dead boy."

Dragan opened his mouth again to reply -- and that's when he realised it. That's when he realised something that had been happening for quite a while now.

That's when he realised someone was screaming right into his air.

The Archivist had been made indistinct by exhaustion and confusion, his face a mosaic of eye and mouth. Even as Dragan looked up at him, eyes wide, he realised he had no idea how long the projection had been there -- hunched over like some kind of animal, shouting at the top of his hypothetical lungs.

"NON-EXISTENT!" he roared, voice slicing through the caverns of Dragan's mind. His finger, sharp as a knife, was pointed right at Anne's curious face. "NON-EXISTENT!"

"What's non-existent, dead boy?" Anne asked back.

It was like a floodgate had opened. Thoughts that had been forbidden erupted all at once.

Didn't weigh as much as she should -- didn't weigh anything at all -- moved when she shouldn't be able to -- no way someone from White Village got this far underground -- no way a kid escapes from so many Repurposed -- no way a kid isn't scared by all this. No way a kid.

Replied to the Archivist. Inside his mind. No way a kid.

Dragan went to get up, as if he was going to do something -- but he had no idea what. Grab Anne, attack her? She clearly wasn't real, some kind of hallucination, so what would doing that accomplish? At any rate, it didn't matter.

Before he could get up off his feet, Dragan felt the tip of Anne's cold, non-existent, finger press against his forehead…

…and he was swallowed by the past.