Alix’s mind had cleared enough for her to recognize that she was currently, fully engulfed in a waking dream. The starlit sky, the field of the farm she’d grown up in, the gentle cricket song in the air, and her father’s affectionate smile were all nothing more than visions within an extremely vivid hallucination. None of this was real.

But she ran and hugged her dad anyway.

“Oh, Dad,” she said into his shoulder, which felt so astoundingly real. “This is one of those days where I think I shouldn’t have left the farm.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, kiddo.” Dad ruffled her hair. “You’re doing exactly what you were meant to do. I always knew you were made to go out and be an explorer.”

Alix sniffed. “Dad, there’s no lady-like way for me to say this, but I’m sucking ass at this job right now.”

Dad raised an eyebrow. “There were probably at least a few lady-like ways for you to say that.”

“It’s all gone sideways. I’m literally hiding up a tree. The things that chased me up there are going to get to me any minute.” Alix looked up at the sky of her childhood. “I think I’m going to be joining you up there sooner than I thought. And what’s worse, I’m going to let Figaro down.”

“No such thing is going to happen. You’re going to figure this puzzle out, same as always,” said Dad.

“It’s not the same as always.” Alix laughed bitterly. She wiped away a tear. “God, if only you could see Kabir’s Crimson Forest. Nothing like the woods back home. Everything in Kabir’s is red, like it’s one big giant danger sign. Which is appropriate, really. It’s terrifying, top to bottom.”

“A giant danger sign, hm?” Dad stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“Red, red, red, everywhere you look. Danger,” Alix said quietly, echoing the words that she’d heard in her dreams all throughout this journey.

“Well, I don’t see why red has to just mean danger,” said Dad. He traced the vein on his arm, from wrist to heart. “Red is the blood that carries oxygen through your body and keeps you alive. Red light lets plants grow and flower.”

He pointed up at the stars next.

“When the universe begins winding to its end, red dwarf stars will be the last refuge for sentient life, the last stars shining. Hell, red are the poppies growing in the garden, the cardinals singing in the tree, the apple I packed for your lunch on your first day of school. Red means plenty of things. Red means life.”

“Oh. I guess that’s true.” Alix glanced at the woods beyond. As they always did in the dream, they slowly turned red. It sparked the familiar fear in her, but she didn’t let that take hold of her this time. She talked over the fear even as it beat within her chest. “This shouldn’t be the kind of thing I need a hallucination to make me understand. I don’t get what’s happening to me.”

“There must be a reason.” Dad nodded. “We have to talk it out.”

Alix gave him a sad look. “That won’t help much. You don’t know anything I don’t know. You’re not really here. You’re just the last gasps of my scrambled brain waves before I die.”

“What’s got your brain waves scrambled?”

“That’s just the thing, I don’t know! It’s like all my senses have sharpened, but my thinking itself is foggy. Or uncontrolled, maybe. And the constant hallucinations sure aren’t helping clear things up.”

Dad tilted his head. “Something to consider, kiddo: if I and the other ‘hallucinations’ are just products of your scrambled brain waves, and we’re not leaving you alone, then maybe your brain keeps sending them out for a reason. Maybe this is your subconscious trying to get through to you. To show you what you aren’t seeing.”

Alix heard voices echoing in the air then.

“After all I taught you, you still haven’t learned how to see the true danger.”

“You’ll have to give it up sooner or later!”

“They couldn’t stop themselves from chasing if they wanted to.”

“Everywhere you looked, you’ve seen red.” Dad gently put his hand on Alix’s shoulder. “But what else have you seen?”

The grass swayed around Alix again. Green beetles clung to the stalks, glowing in the night.

“What’s been chasing you since you came down from the mountain?”

Alix remembered the green foam dripping from the mouths of the parvolopes and the tarlozi.

“What’s been haunting your dreams?”

Green insectoids crawling out of Lyle’s mouth, green flowers in Mason’s eyes, green smeared on Professor Matson’s lips.

“What’s been with you since this whole mess began?”

Alix looked down at her hand and realized she’d had it clenched into a fist this entire time. She slowly uncurled her fingers to reveal the small, green glowing wing fragment she’d taken from the cavern tunnel.

Everything clicked together, and Kansas snapped out of existence.

***

Alix’s eyes snapped open.

Red leaves surrounded her. She was up in the branches still, with a golden sky above her. The wind ran through the canopy and the leaves rustled. Alix turned her head to see Figaro on her shoulder, jabbing his limb downward and shouting. She looked down at where the little robot was pointing.

The howling creatures were clawing at the tree in an unhinged frenzy. They each possessed three emerald eyes with the largest eye in the middle of their foreheads. They also sported fangs as big as Alix’s hand. They snarled ravenously, and one was making progress clawing his way up the length of the tree. They were about double her size, though they seemed weakened by sickness. They had the tell-tale twitches, the green foam at their mouths, and Alix was willing to be that they had run themselves ragged in their pursuit of her.

Well, not just her.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Alix looked down at the wing fragment still in her palm.

Something in her screamed against what she was about to do. She felt like she could hold on to the fragment forever. There was an undeniable urge to squeeze it into her palm until she had made it a part of herself. The desire for the fragment was an animal need. A desperate craving.

A part of Alix wanted to believe that was merely the scientist in her not wanting to lose a valuable specimen for study, but she knew that the real reason she wanted to keep it was the same reason she had to be rid of it as quickly as possible.

“Hey boys,” Alix rasped. She held the wing fragment up high where they could see. “Fetch.”

Alix threw the fragment, sending it sailing just over the howlers’ heads and into the thicket beyond. The raging beasts instantly turned to follow it, jostling each other to be the first to reach it.

If Figaro had a jaw, it probably would have dropped. “What the actual, everloving—”

“I’ll explain as soon as we put some distance between us and them,” Alix said, already climbing down from the tree. She still felt dizzy. “And for my head to clear a bit more.”

“But I don’t understand! Why the hell did they just ditch us for some old bug part?”

“Because that ‘old bug part’ was what they were after from the start. They’re addicted to it, or to whatever bioluminescent chemical is inside it,” Alix told him as she reached the forest floor. She turned and broke into a jog back in the direction of the station, assuming she still had her bearings straight. Which, admittedly, might have been a faulty assumption. “Which is why I need to get as much of this stuff out of my system as possible, and get the scent off of me. Keep your eyes peeled for a river or stream.”

The sound of a bark in the distance stopped Figaro from continuing his line of questioning. For a while, they both were silent as they made their way through the forest. Figaro searched for a water source as Alix kept up running, though she struggled with the pace before long. Now that she was free of the wing fragment, she could feel her senses dulling again, the overload of stimulus reverting back to the background static her body was made to process. She could also feel traces of withdrawal symptoms. Twitching was replaced by sweating, nausea hit her in waves, and she felt a bit like a Jenga tower on the verge of crumbling. But at least she felt like herself again. Almost.

***

After about an hour, during which Alix had only stopped three times to upchuck, Figaro spotted a stream.

“To the left, right down this little hill,” said Figaro, pointing the way.

“Oh God, finally.” Alix dragged herself down, stumbling over roots and bushes until she finally reached the glorious, blessedly cool waters of the stream. She went in fully clothed and submerged herself fully with Figaro still on her shoulder.

“Brrrr!” he said when Alix reemerged. “This water’s so chilly, my temp sensors are ready to freeze.”

“I’ve been getting the chills the whole past hour, so it makes no difference to me!” Alix declared brightly, splashing water on her face and hair.

“We really need to get you to a medic.”

“Oh, most definitely.” Alix nodded. She ducked under the water once more, eager to get every vestige of the fragment’s scent off of her. “I didn’t ingest it, so hopefully there won’t be long-term damage as a result of my exposure.”

“But exposure to what?” Figaro shook the water off himself. “What’s the deal with the beetle wing?”

“Well the in-depth answer would probably require another sample being given the ol’ one-two in the station lab, but I can tell you what I think the deal is,” said Alix. “Whatever chemical it is that gives those beetles their bioluminescence, it has a very different effect on everything else. On top of the ways it changes the body that I saw, like the mouth foam, it’s hallucinogenic and addictive. Parvolopes and malars are insectivores, so no surprise how they might have ingested it, and then you’ve got animals farther up the food chain that are exposed from eating them. If these beetles have one too-successful breeding season and start making their way up the chain, then suddenly you’ve got yourself a severe addiction being spread through that area of the forest like it’s a virus.”

“Goddamn.” Figaro whistled. “No wonder you were acting so wonky. Thank God all that’s over.”

The dream of Kansas flashed in Alix’s mind. If she closed her eyes, she could still see Dad in the field with her, beneath the Milky Way.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Thank God.”

Figaro straightened suddenly. “Whoa!”

“What is it?”

“I think I’m finally getting pinged back by the station,” Figaro said excitedly. “Or whoever’s manning the comms, at least.”

“That’s fantastic! Your comms system’s not jacked up after all!” Alix hurried out of the water, confident that she had sufficiently cleansed herself of the wing fragment. “What are they saying?”

Figaro tilted in a perplexed gesture. “I’m not sure . . . it’s not coming through clearly. It’s all fuzzy.”

“Fuzzy?’ Alix furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s also a little weird they’ve taken this long to get back to—”

“Shh!” Figaro held up a limb to silence her. “I’m trying to concentrate. I think I can make out a word.”

Alix went silent, letting him focus on the message. Whatever that one word was, it had better lead to them being rescued. Just because her fear of the forest was finally fading didn’t mean her exhaustion was. She couldn’t think of any sight that would be more welcome than a podship zooming in from beyond the trees, ready to welcome them in and zip them the rest of the way to the station.

“Uh,” Figaro drummed his limbs nervously on Alix’s shoulder. “This isn’t promising.”

“Not promising? What does that mean? What’d they say?” Alix’s stomach sank.

“The only thing that came through is ‘return’.”

Alix’s jaw dropped. For a moment, she simply stood by the bank of the stream, staring blankly ahead.

“That’s all they said? RETURN?” Alix balled her hands into fists and stamped her foot against the ground. “Motherfuckers!”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“We’ve been missing and stranded for days and that’s all they care to say? They won’t even give us a damn ride back?” Alix kicked a rock into the stream. “At least the Aexons gave us a ride in the cart! Humans suck! We should have just stayed with the Aexons and became citizens of Ratlantis!”

“I don’t think we were invited to do so,” Figaro scoffed. “But that’s not the point. Something’s off with this message.”

“How?”

“It wasn’t a human voice sending it, for one. It sounded like it was automated or something. And they spammed the word five times in a row. The whole thing’s just weird.”

Alix put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Weird has really been the theme lately, I’ve noticed.”

“Well, we could hope it’s a fluke and wait to see if they come and get us after all,” said Figaro. “But we’re not in a great position to sit around, Boss. The raygun’s got no charge, the tranq’s somewhere back in Ratlantis, and you’re still looking pretty shaky.”

“I agree. I mean I hate it, I’d rather just lay down right here in this bush and sleep for a week straight, but I agree.” Alix rolled her shoulders and got to walking. The woods around them were quiet, the only sounds being an occasional malar chirp or the wind rustling the leaves. “Still, I wouldn’t worry any more about beetlejuice addicts coming after us. The stream’s washed all the green stank off me! I think.”

“Well that’s good, we can—WHAT WAS THAT?”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“No, I’m serious!” Figaro squeaked. “I just saw something scuttling up that tree! And now that one, too!”

“Huh?” Alix looked around, not seeing anything at first. Then, she caught a flash of glowing green darting up into the nearby branches.

“And there’s more up ahead there! And that bush! Aw sick, they’re everywhere!”

Figaro was right. At first, Alix saw only a few dozen creeping around the tree trunks and ferns. Then hundreds more began to emerge from the ground like some tiny zombie apocalypse, shaking off dirt flecks and swarming everything in sight.

“Well, it would seem the beetles have had a very, very successful breeding season,” Alix said faintly, her heart beating in double-time as she watched the green glow spread with every beetle that broke through the ground. She didn’t need sharpened senses to notice the howls in the distance, or the shaking of branches as malars hurtled down from the sky, or the rumblings of a nearby parvolope horde. “And we are about to have a very, very bad time.”