They draw close to Grent’s ‘clinic’, a cave entrance, plugged tight with a massive plate of steel.
A small, equally steely, door adorns its left corner, truly minuscule in comparison.
Grent trudges up to the door and takes out a key card from his lab coat’s, zippered, side pocket.
He swipes it across the reader embedded in the stone next to the door, it blinks a green light in approval, as the door’s locks disengage.
“After you.”
Amethyst passes him and stares at the closed door for a moment, before raising a hand to hover over the handle of the door.
She slowly lowers the bladed hand to rest on the handle.
As soon as Amethyst applies any force to try opening the door, the end of the handle clatters on the stone below, cut clean off.
Oh... I probably should have opened it…
But how does it even know how to use a door?
Amethyst tries again, this time bringing her hand from the side but only managing to cut the rest of the handle off from the very base, which joins its other half on the rocks with a loud noise.
“Just try to open the door, don’t worry about the handle.”
As instructed, Amethyst stabs its bladed hand through the spot where the handle was and pushes.
The door opens slightly, though now the blade is stuck to the door.
The insect reaches forwards and pushes the door open.
Crouching down, it start to move sideways like a crab, carefully bringing her legs over the threshold one by one.
Once half are on the other side, Amethyst brings its upper body over with an even deeper crouch.
Rest of its legs get through the doorway and it faces backwards to free its blade.
One strong pull is all it takes to bring the curved hand blade loose.
Amethyst is now facing backwards, having done an 180 degree turn during her entry, standing in the dark room, with only a single red, low power, light above.
In the ominous lighting, it looks directly at Grent, betraying no happiness for its triumph, nor embarrassment on its face from this needless struggle.
“A-amethyst please walk further in, you are blocking the doorway.”
Amethyst takes a few more steps backwards as commanded.
Grent follows through and notices the door’s inner locking mechanism lying on the floor in small metal pieces, he steps over it into the room.
Closing the ruined door behind him, it only opens back up again with a creak.
Grent closes the door again with a sigh, proceeding to slam it shut repeatedly before it finally stays closed.
He flicks a switch next to the door, lights flashing on around the room, reminiscent of a reception area.
At the back, like a center piece, a wide wooden desk with a computer laid on top and a flimsy chair behind it. Only the receptionist is missing from behind to welcome the visitors in.
But other than that, the room appears to be used strictly for storage now.
Random junk line the walls and floor, monitors, large glass tubes, machinery, lots of boxes all around.
A bookself on the back wall as well as many hooks with some sort of equipment and tools hanging on them around the room.
White wooden walls hold up a few paintings and posters depicting company slogans and products.
One particular poster has a cartoon style green lizard wizard, holding up a pickaxe, with a slogan "Mine and dine, how divine!" above it.
Below, a smaller text which reads: "Affordably priced Centizard products to our brothers and sisters at Intergalactic Resources!"
The room has no roof, the stone it was carved inside serving as a natural ceiling.
Apart from the mess, it is quite a cozy room, a fluffy green full floor carpet covers the neatly lit room, a few colorful couches livening it up too.
Three doors lead further into the complex, one in each cardinal direction.
Normal, low security, doors lead to the right and straight on, while a contrasting heavy steel plating covers the left wall, with an equally heavy duty door.
Grent takes the lead.
“This way”
He walks up to the steel door on the left, wading through the labyrinth of stuff.
Swiping another key card reader, this time the door opens up automatically and he steps in first, leaving the door open after him, the door remaining open after him.
Amethyst follows without hesitation.
The lobby's ceiling is very high up, allowing it to walk without crouching, the floor however proving to be impossible to navigate cleanly.
It knocks over a few boxes and steps on a couch cushion, which gets stuck up its leg.
The punctured blue cushion gets launched into the opposing wall as the giant insect shakes it off.
Grent is peeking through the doorway at Amethyst's antics, making way as it finally made it through the minefield.
Amethyst crouches and shuffles through the doorway inside, Grent closes the door, multiple locks click loudly.
The white bright lighting gives the room a sterile atmosphere, cabinets, drawers, medical equipment and machinery laying around, lacking any obvious order or meaning to their arrangement.
Grent hurries to a desk on the right, with a computer on top of it, right next to a fridge.
He boots up the machine and with shaky hands, turns to rifle through the contents of the fridge.
He piles on things onto the table from inside, vials with different colored liquids, disinfectant, a canned drink.
His left hand opens up the drink with a fizz, gulping it down greedily.
“Ahhh...” his parched throat was due a drink ages ago, he plonks down the can and takes out bandages from the desk’s drawer.
Blood drips onto the tiled floor as he carefully opens up the shirt bandage on his wrist.
Popping open a bottle, he pours disinfectant on the cut, pain induced hisses escape his lips.
Amethyst has stood idly by in the meantime, watching the man scramble around his workshop for the whole time.
No instructions, no commands, not even a vague suggestions to fulfill.
The scientist finally remembers the hulking insect in the room.
“Oh, uh, set yourself up on the bed and I’ll treat you in a moment.”
Grent proceeds to dress his wound into a neat bandage as Amethyst turns to look at the rest of the room.
Long test tubes cover the back wall with different colored liquids in them, the left wall lined up with three different exotic stuffed animal heads.
A strange looking moose with green skin, mushrooms growing out of its skin with antlers that look to be made of thorns.
The second head, a sort of elephant like creature, though this one has no ears and four trunks instead, it’s a bleached red color with three tiny eyes on its forehead.
The last of these hanged heads, a familiar creature, a sabertiger’s cub, its head still quite massive, though without the long signature fangs of the adults.
Its furry orange face looks contorted in terror.
Looking at the heads, a fleeting sense of trepidation courses through her mind, as her body continues its advance to the bed.
The long and wide hospital bed, looking too big for human usage and made of way too thick steel beams for supporting their light bodies. It has small heavy duty wheels on each of its four legs.
Amethyst lays a hand on the ‘bed’, the cloth on top of it is more like plastic, ripping from just merely putting down her blade on it, revealing the cold steel beneath.
Much to Amethyst’s surprise, she feels something well up inside of her again, some kind of feeling, like… uncertainty.
It lingers just long enough for her to notice, but right as she is about to grasp onto it, hold it, the feeling has already disappeared, like it hadn’t been there in the first place.
Returning her mind to its pacified state.
The purple insect sits on the table and flips her four legs over the edge and onto the bed.
The smoothness and the feeling of this unusual movement catches her off guard.
She didn’t know what sitting was, but she had done it, like she’d done it before countless times, her body guiding her along.
The surprise disappears from her face as a state of blankness takes it over.
Amethyst lays on her back, looking up at the stone ceiling, empty like a husk.
Four legs spread apart like a hand fan, her bladed arms on both sides, her antennae, completely still on her head, along with her crown.
She awaits for further instructions.
Meanwhile, Grent has finished treating himself and is using the computer. His quite long and pale fingers deftly type on the holographic keys.
He turns on a scanner in the ceiling, which shoots a near invisible blanket of light, swooping over the operating table and Amethyst.
Grent pays close attention to Amethyst during the scan, but it does not seem to notice the procedure.
The display reads: “Scanning complete. Compiling Data: 1%”
Can’t wait to see just what’s going on in that head, maybe my mind ray was a bit too powerful, breaking apart the insect’s mind?
Or maybe the opposite, I’ve never seen it wear off that quickly before…
It was very obedient though...
So many unknowns still remain in the equation.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
...
What should I do with it?
Amande, could you forgive and forget?
Tell me, what should I do?
What would you have wanted me to do?
Grent closes his eyes and waits to hear something, waiting for any sort of a sign.
The computer’s fans whirr, blowing the time away with their susurration.
There is no sign, no second opinion, the voice of Amande does not grace his ears.
He takes another sip from the can and picks up a syringe and a vial next to it.
The sharp needle penetrates the upside down vial's plastic cover, sucking itself full of yellow liquid.
Once he is done, he places it on a small steel cart, various other instruments cover its surface already: Scalpels, tweezers, pliers, anything he may need.
Alright, let’s do this then.
Grent takes a deep breath and presses a button on the table.
Zwoop!
Jet black, belt like restraints shoot from underneath the bed and bind Amethyst tightly against the bed’s steel frame.
It’s clearly startled and attempts to break free from its shackles immediately, eyes wide in surprise.
Grent takes a final glance at the screen.
“27%”
The insect cannot move at all, not its legs, not even its blades.
Only the humanoid head is free to move, its bone crown and antennae move around frantically as its head is raised.
It struggles against the restraints, its smooth purple hair moving around with the motion, the longer bangs of hair get thrown around in wide arcs.
“Now hold still, it’ll be fine.” Grent appears on her left side with the syringe, he looks upon the fractured armor plate on its shoulder.
The hole is messy with green conjugated blood all around it with pieces of carapace shards in the mix.
It is impossible to see what kind of injuries are hiding below.
The syringe’s thin sharp needle glistens against the light as he prepares to inject it through the skin of the wound, one of the few places not protected by a hard shell.
This should work, how complicated its physiology could possibly be?
"This'll sting just a bit"
Amethyst's face is slowly hardening in expression, its eyebrows, eyes and mouth contorting as the needle approaches.
She fights fiercely against the restraints as panic takes over.
The whole table shakes, but I doesn’t budge, the wheels locked in place.
“H-hey! Calm down Amethyst!” Grent shouts, laying down the syringe on the roller table and pulling out the laser gun.
He turns on the display attached to it and starts fiddling with it’s settings.
Amethyst's mandibles appear from inside of her mouth and she speaks with an echoing voice, the sharp, curved mandibles vibrating along.
“No.”
Grent stops.
“No?”
He looks up from the display of his mind ray to see Amethyst’s crystals, all around her body, starting to glow; brighter and brighter.
The plastic cover of the table starts melting in the areas near the crystals, then the steel table under it.
The black restraints snap from around her arms, as her blades are charged with this purple flame too.
Grent fires the device at Amethyst, aiming for the head.
The energy projectile is deflected, as Amethyst raises her long elbow blade to block it.
It gets imbued with the purple flame as the ray zings across the room striking a long glass tube at the back, leaving behind a black scorch mark.
Amethyst uses her other hand and snips the rest of the restraints clean off, anger written plain on her face as her mandibles and antennae move around restlessly.
“Amethyst, get back on the bed!” Grent raises his voice and shoots again.
She sits up on the table and ricochets the projectile using her wrist crystal.
He shoots again and again, until the pistol starts beeping and flashing a red warning light on the display.
Amethyst expertly deflects them all, using whatever blade or crystal in her body that was closest to the shot’s aimed location.
Purple flaming projectiles ricochet around the room, one reflected by chance right back at Grent, too busy tinkering with his malfunctioning equipment.
It hits him square on the chest, burning through his shirt, exposing skin.
The pain and the force knock him back, he tries to take support from the metal cart, but it instead rolls away from underneath his arm.
His weight launches and flips the whole table, the tools scatter everywhere and the glass syringe shatters onto the floor, in a yellow puddle.
Grent falls on his back, the suggestion ray is knocked from his grip and bonks on the floor, receiving a dent on it’s metal frame.
Amethyst gets up from the table towards the door, but at the same time Grent suddenly scampers back up from the floor already.
His brown hair is disheveled, his dizzy and confused face bleeding.
Amethyst turns back around, bladed hands raised at the ready.
“Where… am I? What happened?"
Grent notices the sharp, threatening blades.
"Wait wait! Don't do anything rash! I just want to talk. You wouldn't know what's going on?”
“Who- Agh, my head is killing me. Just hold on, please.” Grent holds his head and limps to the table, starting to rifle through its documents and drawers.
“Painkillers, painkillers…” he mutters. "Somewhere here... there must be something."
Amethyst looses interest in the man and her purple glow fades from her crystals and blades.
Finally she is able to be herself after so long, but something feels different in her mind. Like there was something more.
Something extra that didn’t belong in her head.
But that would not distract her thoughts from the one thing that mattered, that which pressed upon her mind the hardest.
Mother.
She felt this fundamental yearning to help her, to save her, much stronger than she was aware of ever feeling before.
Had she been aware of her feelings before today…?
Had she even thought of her as mother on a non-instinctual level until now?
Her head burst with foreign knowledge, with words and feelings she didn’t know the source for.
Amethyst’s head throbbed in pain, unable to receive answers to her jumbled thoughts.
She slowly creeps towards the door, looking upon it, trying to navigate the fog of her brain, she knew how these worked right?
Why couldn’t she remember?
Why did she know how these worked?
Why would she possibly know that?
Did she really even know?
“Hey, where are you going?” Grent asks from behind her again.
Amethyst does not turn around but ponders the endless questions in her head, including a solution to this door problem.
“Please you’ve got to help me! I don’t seem to remember anything about me, I know concepts and everyday stuff, but I don’t even know my own name! What's going on!?”
Grent panics but manages to calm himself.
“Come on turn around, please. Look, I found this picture, I’m in this right? Do you know where the other person is? Maybe they know what is going on?” He pleads.
Amethyst turns around out of curiosity, Grent is leaning on the table and tiredly holds up the photograph for her to see.
In the picture, it is undoubtedly the man before her and another human… female?
They both wear long white coats, the woman’s near-golden hair are blown to the side by the wind.
Their arms spread over each other’s shoulders, with big grins on their lips.
Amethyst almost faints upon seeing the photograph, her own thoughts and consciousness being overwhelmed, threatening to get put back into the background again.
She forces herself to look away from the photo, the extra presence in her mind fighting against her.
Grent feels his face, tears form under his eyes and flow relentlessly down his cheeks.
“W-what’s going on? Am I crying? But... why?”
Amethyst closes her eyes momentarily, trying to clear her mind.
The throbbing inside subsides, as the presence seems to yield, though her mind remains abuzz of other thoughts.
She turns around and returns her gaze at the door, staring at it in silence.
“Umm… do you not know how to use doors?”
“Shut... it.” She hisses, her mandibles shaking in chorus, with clearer articulation than before.
Grent, obeying the command, falls silent and turns away from her.
He puts the photograph back on the table and glances at the computer screen.
It shows a detailed scan of Amethyst’s whole body, a red message written above in the image:
Warning: Artificially injected consciousnesses Amande, stronger than original mind.
Current assimilation: 11%
Why does Amande somehow sound so familiar...?
He continues reading after this seemingly random thought:
> Recommended action:
>
> Remove the infringing consciousness before it absorbs the original.
>
>
> Failure to do so in time, can lead to the subject experiencing the following symptom(s), as the assimilation rate rises, see Amethyst_Symptom_Assessment.txt
Grent’s empty mind does not understand who he is reading about, but follows the computer’s command and finds the appropriate file.
Inside, a long list of probable symptoms and conditions are listed, sorted from the most likely to the least:
> Amande absorbs the original mind 95%
>
> Chronic insanity 87%
>
> Brain Death 75%
>
> Coma 75%
>
> Depression 70%
>
> Schizophrenia 66%
>
> Total organ failure 50%
>
> Full body paralysis 50%
>
> Weakened immune system 46%
>
> Partial paralysis 37%
>
> Aggressive behavior 29%
> Mindless husk 23%
> Amande replaces the mind while remaining functional 15%
> Suicidal tendencies 10%
> Original mind absorbs Amande 5%
>
> Chance of condition improving on its own 0%
>
> Chance of no symptoms 0%
Grent felt sorry for this person, whoever this Amethyst was, nothing in the file sounded good, but he couldn't help but feel happy for a moment.
Somebody else was somehow doing worse than his amnesiac mind.
----------------------------------------
I… I’m not human.
Right?
I don’t need to open doors.
I’m… me...
Not a human.
Amethyst was finally able to at least answer one question in her mind, a seemingly obvious question with an apparent answer, but now she knew exactly what to do.
She concentrates and commands muscle flaps inside of her body, unique to her species, evolved to fulfill only one purpose.
The muscles acting as blockers open, granting her blood access to special, empty veins, thicker than normal blood vessels.
Her green blood shoots along the path and into the organs along it, which looked like purple crystals from the outside.
Inside them, the green blood mixed in with another compound manufactured by this gland, the mixture turned to purple.
The crystals along her body, start emanating a bright violet glow.
She had burned through her ready-made supply earlier to escape the restraints, so she had to synthesize more.
Letting in a small amount of blood before closing down the access to these special veins.
Spending too much would lead to anemia or poisoning of her own blood, if she let the purple compound get into her circulation.
She then opened the next muscle gates leading to her arms, the bright purple flowed into her blades and seeped through their surface in small amounts.
The compound burst into flames as soon it came into contact with the outside air.
Her blades were now ready, ablaze with incredibly hot purple flame.
She stabs an elbow blade through the metal door, it begins to melt from around it immediately.
She slices a long cut downwards from the spot, followed by a swing from her other hand's long blade, making a large V-shape slice all the way through the steel wall.
A third cut at the top to finishes it into a triangle, the steel slab with molten edges falls into the lobby’s side of the door.
The liquid steel sets small fires on the fluffy green carpet.
Taking a long step through the hole over the sizzling plate, crouching to get through the hole, liquid metal drips onto her shoulder from the doorway's rough edge.
Most of it slides down her armor and onto the floor, she notices it, but does not react, there is no pain.
Still, as Amethyst makes it through, she hovers her flaming arm near the metal drop's remains, but does not touch it.
The rest of it evaporates from her shoulder, leaving only a small gray stain behind on the purple carapace.
She hurriedly gallops through the lobby, boxes, chairs and equipment are launched and shoved from her way as she stampedes.
Nearing the last door between the outside world, the final obstacle between her and her mother.
The fire spreads and grows behind her, in front of the hole she made to escape.
Her blades leave a flaming purple trail as she runs, fluttering in the air before landing onto the carpet, starting more small fires.
She ignores the busted small door ahead, opting to use the preheated blades to slice another triangle on the thick steel wall.
The blades sinking in easily and make quick work of it.
She steps through the hole into the harsh sunlight of the twin suns in the sky. For a moment she feels relieved and free.
However, worry quickly takes over.
Amethyst cannot see her mother anywhere, the piles of rocks are laid around in the distance, where she was last seen, but no sign of her.
She emits a low, but loud, buzzing sounds from her mandibles, as she cries out from her throat, a very high pitched continuous note.
Her mandibles’ buzz resonating with her voice, rubbing against each other faster, amplifying it.
She soon stops her calling and listens.
Her antennae scan for sounds, pointing all around, flicking and moving rapidly, almost like they had a mind of their own.
Amethyst hears no response, only faraway human voices, the hum and rumble of machinery and the crackling of fire in the facility behind...
No sign of mother.