Chief

Nai had been let out of the quarantine.

The new Casti, the one that looked in charge, had appeared outside the plastic sheets sealing our quarantine section. I didn’t have a great view of the alien. I was still inside the quarantine’s sheeting. It made for a somewhat distorted view.

But even through two layers of plastic, it was hard to mistake the Casti for another. For one, it was the only one wearing a decorated uniform. The other Casti I’d glimpsed on the base had been in jumpsuits or other rough-function uniforms.

It was an alien in full dress. Daniel had been right; we were now the problem of someone important.

But the important Casti hadn’t been here for me. Instead, it ushered Nai through the series of zippers and flaps that constituted the quarantine’s makeshift airlock.

It should have been more of a heads up, but my guard was down. I didn’t connect the dots. Daniel and I were still stuck among aliens, but we’d put plenty of guns and other aliens between us and the Vorak. Given the relative safety, it was impossible not to decompress.

Which isn’t to mean things weren’t still tense. It just didn’t feel like I might catch a Vorak bullet at any moment. There was still plenty to be worried about, like dying to an alien infection.

But worrying about that instead of imminent bodily harm was a welcome change.

Bonus, I’d even been patched up. It couldn’t be more obvious how alien I was to the poor alien medic in the biohazard suit, but there were still some underlying basics in medicine like ‘keep the blood on the inside’.

My various scrapes and the one stab wound had been dressed in some bandages that stung the ever-living-daylights out of me for about ten minutes, but the chemical smell of the bandages made me confident the pain was from alcohol or some other disinfectant.

The doctor in question was a Farnata, and I hadn’t gotten the new alien’s name yet, but I didn’t feel pressured. I was exhausted and this was the first instance of secure downtime I’d had in weeks .

And I had a Daniel to fix. To save?

That was pretty much the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? Something was wrong, but neither of us were sure what.

The problem was all in my head though, so we didn’t need to be anywhere.

Trouble was, in the time since we’d reached this Casti facility, we’d made zero progress. Not having to worry about Nai being in the same room made us only slightly more productive.

Even after hours of exploratory prods, we were no closer to understanding what was happening inside my mind.

I resisted the urge to throw something.

While the last few hours of mental tinkering hadn’t yielded many results, some of the failures had been informative. I was getting a sense of some things in my head, where Daniel was, where he wasn’t.

And most importantly, the state of the mysterious ‘thing’ I’d made. ‘The Phantom’ as Daniel called it. I didn’t have the mirror in my head anymore, and I wasn’t about to have Daniel risk making another. But I was beginning to get a better picture of my mind even without the tool.

It was closing in on Daniel. He had a day, maybe two if we were lucky.

I said simply.

<…No, and I think I know why,> I said,

I thought,

I frowned,

We weren’t sharing optimism, I realized.

He was relatively positive, because I was under pressure, stress to help him—negative. But I was actually using the optimism, the hope. I was certain it was possible to save him.

He wasn’t.

And his memory was deteriorating enough to affect his vocabulary that he didn’t quite catch the dissonance.

We were going to have to start taking some risks about the Phantom soon, otherwise there might not be enough Daniel left to save.

I’d been lying down too long. Getting my blood moving would do me some good. My box inside the quarantine wasn’t large enough for anything besides stretching, but that was fine. I wasn’t in the mood to run even more.

My wounds might have been bandaged, but I wasn’t eager to open them again.

I flexed my shoulder gingerly. Daniel was right. Even small twitches should have produced shooting agony. Instead, I had mostly normal range of motion with only a persistent minor ache from my shoulder wound.

Daniel mused.

The fact that Daniel still had a sense of humor despite what could be his dying moments threatened to choke me up. He noticed my reaction.

I finished stretching and plopped back down on the floor.

I told him,

Prophetic words, those.

If we were going to start taking more risks to avert Daniels deterioration, chief among them needed to be figuring out the Phantom.

Daniel didn’t seem to be falling apart on his own. He was being pulled apart, with how he described the pieces of himself, maybe even ‘digested’. There was some agency to the phantom; it was doing things unprompted.

So what kind of thing would I make in my head that does things on its own?

What, of those things, would go after Daniel?

The possibility of a literal inner demon occurred.

Our shared experiences since waking up with the Vorak had brought my opinion of Daniel back around. But on the ship, by the end, I’d been ready to kill him.

I had .

Was there some Freudian piece of my brain so eager for vengeance that it would destroy Daniel, even if every fiber of the rest of me wanted something else?

I’d never really thought of myself as a vindictive person, but I couldn’t dismiss the possibility entirely. Our time on the ship had been some of the direst, most stressful moments of my life. I couldn’t speak confidently that, in one of those harsh moments, that my mind wouldn’t have come up with something like the Phantom.

It didn’t feel right. I might have been mad, both categorically and at Daniel. But even on the ship, I felt I’d been more preoccupied with our mysterious abductors.

No…if I was vengeful toward anyone, it had to those same abductors. The Vorak, who’d ruined my life and killed dozens of children.

That was a score worth settling.

Before I could turn my thoughts back toward other possibilities surrounding the phantom, I heard an odd crackle beneath the floor.

The quarantine cube suddenly exploded when a half dozen spikes thrust up through bottom!

Each one was like a telephone pole lancing up and out through the plastic sheeting, continuing onward to bury themselves into the ceiling and walls.

One second, there had been a calm room. The next, it was like a tree made of rounded clear crystal had exploded into existence.

The central spear had missed my torso by inches, the rest were centered on me too, positioned for coverage.

I looked toward Tasser and Nemuleki for any indication of what was happening. They both had dove toward safety on reflex following the spike’s appearance.

For a few seconds after the initial burst, nothing seemed to happen. I looked between the massive spikes and the Casti watching me.

“”

No sooner than the moment it seemed like nothing would follow did the spikes shudder .

I was slow to realize that the danger hadn’t passed.

The spikes exploded outward again. Each one sprouting thinner barbs intermittently and growing new spears in new directions. The second wave caught me twice, one spearing into my arm before I twisted out of the way and the other scraping across my forehead.

I had to wipe the blood out of my eyes as I backpedaled away from the growing tangle of spikes.

Tasser recovered first and tore a portion of the plastic sheeting down. The spears had ripped clean through, and if I stayed in the quarantine, I’d get skewered.

Of course. Of course as soon as we’d gotten to safety, I was in danger again. The moment it looked like I might be able to make some progress to help Daniel, it all fell apart again. When we’d reached this Casti base, I thought I might have been wrong about the Vorak hunting me forever. But I wasn’t.

“” I said bitterly. Time to move.

I had to risk precious seconds to grab the air mask. I wouldn’t get far without it.

Daniel reminded me,

Angry and frustrated with my negligence, I flung my Enumius radar in every direction. Immediately, I got a reading I’d felt before, recently.

It was like Nai was standing right under us. Except Nai didn’t attack with solid spikes.

Now that I had my radar up, it wasn’t hard to recognize the emanation the Vorak beneath me gave off. It just wasn’t a sensation I could ever forget. There was only one other alien that had given off the same intensity as the Farnata. The Vorak that had saved Courser.

For a split second I got a glimpse of its same glittering orange armor as it burst through the floor.

Daniel observed.

I said,

Daniel agreed,

Chief. It certainly felt stronger the previous otters. The name fit.

But how was it here? There had to have been hundreds of armed Casti on the way in here. Nai was horrifyingly powerful, but I’d also seen some of their limits. Enumius weren’t invincible. They weren’t gods, or even demigods.

Daniel’s thought cut off as we caught sight of the same horde of Casti out one of the hallway windows.

The huge complex of connected metal and stone buildings was surrounded on three sides by the wide-open flats we’d crossed to enter, and an ocean on the fourth.

It looked like every Casti in the building had put on a poncho, picked up a gun, and was positioned to defend the roads leading toward the complex.

It should have been too wide an area. The land looked perfectly flat for probably half a mile in every direction. But the otters couldn’t come from every angle at once. Because every hundred feet or so, massive concrete canals were gouged into the flats. In the daylight, I could see they encircled the whole of the complex. Any vehicle carrying would-be Vorak attackers had to come via one of the two roads, or else traverse massive ditches several yards wide and deep.

And attackers they were. I could see clumps of Vorak shooting at Casti hunkered behind barricades. The Vorak were attacking this place in earnest. Between the distance and the windows, I didn’t hear most of the gunshots, but even this far away, the motions were unmistakable.

The flash of teal-fire in the distance was what finally made it sink in. The aliens had already broken quarantine with me once because of imminent danger. That was why Nai had been let out. The Casti in charge needed them to barbecue some otters.

Tasser yanked on my shoulder, reminding me that we needed to keep running. Chief was closing in behind us.

Nemuleki wasn’t keeping pace. I’d seen Casti run properly, and this was not that. They were still injured from Trapper’s bomb. Whatever wordless understanding Tasser and I had managed to achieve, one glance was all it took.

Both of us had seen the problem, but we arrived at different solutions.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

We reached an intersection in the hallway with heavy sets of metal doors blocking each route, the kind that might be deployed in an emergency like a fire. Or an alien attack.

Tasser pointed and said something to Nemuleki, trying to send them in another direction. Chief would hopefully ignore Nemuleki, and stay focused on its target.

Except I was one step ahead of Tasser.

My Casti friend was ready to go with me and lure Chief away from Nemuleki, but I was too.

Without waiting for him I picked another of the hallways and broke into a faster run. One of the first things I’d learned about the aliens was that I could outrun them.

“Cayleb!” Tasser yelled.

I looked over my shoulder and made a finger gun and pantomimed firing it. It was a pretty simple message.

Tasser looked like he might try to chase anyway for a second, but I was already gone.

I could move faster without them and if the Casti didn’t know where I was, there was no way for Chief to even threaten them for the information.

I asked Daniel.

he replied,

I said, we were frying bigger fish.

Before he could answer, I felt Chief’s trajectory change. It had been tearing down the hallway I’d come from, but it had stopped before getting to the intersection. Looking out the window of this hall, I even had a view of what it was up to.

Chief smashed out a window, using its claws to cling to the edge of the building for a second.

There was an extra creepily familiar sight of the otter giving a small wiggle before leaping right through the air.

No. That wasn’t quite it. It hadn’t just jumped. A heavy spike protruded from the wall where it had clung. It had grown the spike under foot and used the growth of its own creation to launch itself right at my window.

It had taken the hypotenuse of the triangle. Cut the corner.

Why was this oddly familiar?

Daniel reminded me.

As surprised as I was that Daniel remembered that detail, I was scrambled to avoid the incoming otter.

Chief crashed right through the window and wall completely unimpeded. I kept running though. It had tried to cut me off, but I got ahead of where it would impact and kept running down the hall. I only spared a moment’s glance over my shoulder behind me. The landing might have been a bit rough; the Vorak tumbled across the hall and slammed into the far wall.

I didn’t slow my roll for even a second. Every misstep Chief made was another second I could avoid it with. Sprinting nonstop wouldn’t do either though. I would just exhaust myself if I went full tilt.

Hopefully that applied to Chief too.

Outdoors. I needed to get outdoors as quickly as possible. I didn’t know the layout of these buildings and Chief could likely just barrel straight through any wall, while even one locked door was a dead end for me.

If I got outside, I would have more room to maneuver and give my hunter fewer shortcuts.

Time. I needed to play for time.

Chief had stealthed its way into an attacking position because even it would be in trouble if the full force of the Casti defending the complex came down on it.

Daniel said.

I snapped.

Those same Casti soldiers were under attack themselves. If they were beaten…

Pointless to think about . If that was the case, then I was dead anyway. So I was focusing on the possibilities that let me survive.

The Casti part of the equation was one hole. The other hole was Chief itself, because it was an alien commando capable of creating swords and giant bunches of spikes.

And I was just Caleb.

Even if the Casti outside did win their battle with the attacking Vorak troops, Chief might get to me first. The first time I’d seen it, it created swords and a barricade from a translucent humming crystal. The spikes it had sent through the floor had been similar.

It could create them quickly enough to use them as weapons. In a broad sense, it was as if the Vorak could stab me from anything in the environment, the floor, ceiling, walls.

I had to hope I’d interpreted the rules of these Enumius powers correctly. I could create my flashbang remotely, but remotely , only a few meters. Chief probably had the same restriction. If not, then I couldn’t explain why it was bothering to chase me at all.

It couldn’t attack with its ability from too far away. Time and distance would work for me.

Turns out Chief didn’t need its powerful Enumius tricks to have an overwhelming advantage against me. It wasn’t any of its lackeys.

It had a gun.

From the hall behind me, it must have seen that I was outpacing it in straight lines because it didn’t hesitate to shoot a pair of rounds at me.

The hair on my neck stood up as I heard the gun crack. Simultaneously, I heard two heavy buzzes impact the wall right next to me. The sound of bullets coming within a few inches of me made my skin crawl.

For a sickening moment, I thought I might involuntarily collapse just from having started to shake uncontrollably. But Daniel came through.

Without a word, he clamped down on the knot of fear in my gut and with his intervention, I squashed it down.

He said, giving my attention a feeble push. It wasn’t much, but every scrap of help was indispensable.

Before Chief could get another good line of fire, I went down a new hallway—one with a door that looked like I could get through.

Between the pounding of my feet on the alien-tile floors, my own breathing, and my heartbeat thundering in my ears, my hearing was overwhelmed. So it was even more terrifying to hear the scrape of Chief’s limbs on the floor and even the walls. Sounds of metal and ceramic being torn to pieces echoed from around the corner.

I didn’t want to look at the Vorak, but leaving it to my imagination was ever worse. Before I could stop myself, I imagined its claws raking across my back. Stalker had stabbed me with its knife, and that was one of the two worst, most agonizing injuries I’d ever had in my life.

And Chief could create much larger, more terrifying blades.

I got to the door and at first it wouldn’t budge. There was a small window on it, it led to the exterior of the building. Too small to crawl through.

There was a vertical bar and hinge affixed to one end of the steel door. Hauling on it popped the latch open.

I dared one look behind me, on instinct, to see if I had time to shut or bar the door behind me.

Just like the otter I’d first encountered when I got out of the cell, Chief was running on all fours with its pistol held in its teeth.

Just like the first otter that had tried to stop me when I got out of the cell.

I threw the door shut behind me. It would have been a waste to try and block it. Chief was like Nai. Their ability just let them destroy walls or floors. Barricades were worthless.

I hadn’t realized how cold it would be outside.

There weren’t multiple feet of snow like there had been in the mountains, but there was still a solid two inches. Even one slip and fall would give Chief enough time to catch up to me.

I picked a direction and ran.

Heading arbitrarily away from the building complex was a bad idea. In truly open space, Chief would just gun me down. But if I stayed indoors, it would be able to outmaneuver me and cut me off.

I noticed a pair of Casti nearby driving what could have passed as a golf cart but with treads like a snowmobile or tank. They were going toward the fighting, but slowed when they saw me.

Part of me was tempted to try and get their help. But I’d left Tasser behind for a reason. They gaped and one of them might have reached for a radio, but I turned and ran alongside the building.

It wasn’t even ground exactly, but I could more or less run in a straight line. There were ramps, fenced off areas right next to the building exterior. It was a bit how I imagined a large-scale industrial factory would be. Cargo loading doors, pipes running along and up certain walls; concrete and steel jungle, perfect to hide and evade in.

Skirting around the massive building complex, I got enough distance that Chief vanished from the edge of my radar.

I consulted Daniel,

<…I can’t explain why I feel like this is a mistake, but I think hide.>

I picked ‘up’ to hide. Humans didn't look up often, maybe otters had similar habits.

There were plenty of pipes and other handholds to start up the side of the building, and if I gained some altitude, I could distort my radar downward and boost the range some. Insane as Chief was, I didn’t think it would drop down onto me while I was on a rooftop.

With Chief somewhere still outside my radar’s range, I started climbing. When I reached the top, I still hadn’t detected it. I pulled myself up over the edge and saw my third obvious problem.

There was snow on the ground. And I was trying to hide. My footprints led right to the wall where I’d shimmied up one of the vertical pipes.

I still didn’t detect Chief.

Where had it gone? Could the two Casti have caught its attention?

I let out a frustrated scream in my head. I was trying to be smart about this because reckless decision making now could wind up with me dead. But that didn’t mean my decisions were any less frustrating.

As soon as Daniel said it, I felt an Enumius alien suddenly dart into my radar’s range. And then another. Chief wasn’t alone. Had it brought Courser with it? Did I need to worry about the hounds too?

I didn’t, in fact. Because Courser was not this Vorak’s backup.

It was worse.

The first Vorak I recognized by their unique emanation; it was Chief, it had an unmistakable feedback to it. Like there was something extra tacked on to whatever I was detecting from it. They were moving toward me from below. Rather than follow me outside, they’d continued to go through the building, on a roughly parallel path.

The second alien emanation I was picking up was odd. It moved erratically from the opposite direction, moving in short but rapid bursts. Like it was jumping and leaping from spot to spot rather than running.

There was something extra though, attached to, or following, the second emanation. I couldn’t make anything out. I barely noticed it at all with adrenaline pumping through me. It would have been so easy to not notice in the first place, like a black ball on a black floor.

My odds, slim as they were, had gotten even worse.

Chief would probably attack me right through the floor again, and this new Vorak was covering just as much ground as I could. More, even.

I couldn’t stop moving though. Hiding was no good if I left a trail right to me.

I heard the second emanation as it drew closer, loud concussive shockwaves repeatedly rang out as it zigged and zagged toward me. Any second now…

A shape rocketed out from around the next corner. It was another Vorak in glittering orange armor. But it wasn’t facing me. It wasn’t even moving toward me.

It was running from something else.

In between the deafening blasts, I heard a familiar burning roar.

A flash of teal-fire rushed out from behind the same corner toward the Vorak. Nai followed, sending more flames toward the otter.

we said together. Connecting what I sensed with what my eyes saw, the strange spot accompanying the second Vorak was Nai. Why wasn’t Nai showing up on our radar?

Nai leapt forward, exhibiting some of the frightening mobility and athleticism they’d terrified me with back on the space station. Teal-fire welled up in midair and the Farnata hurled them toward the Vorak.

Instead of trying to dodge, the otter let out a furious shout and thrust a clawed hand toward Nai.

A thunderous distortion rippled outward and blasted apart the gouts of flame coming at it. That was the sound I’d head earlier. Without missing a beat, the second Vorak leapt to attack right where Nai would land. They met its attack head on, catching it, dropping to the ground in a roll, and hurling the Vorak behind them like a judo throw.

I should have headed toward Nai immediately. They hadn’t killed me yet, and we still had a common enemy.

But I still hesitated. The Farnata might kill me on reflex if it saw me trying to get close.

That moment gave Chief another attack. Just like before, there was a sharp crackling sound beneath me.

I moved quicker this time, but in the wrong direction.

None of the stalagmites of crystal that exploded up through the rooftop came close to me, but in my haste to react I practically threw myself off the rooftop.

I didn’t quite go over the edge, but I ended up rolling off anyway just to keep my momentum.

It wasn’t that long of a drop, barely one story, and the gravity here wouldn’t make me hit the ground so hard.

My landing was practically on all fours and my shoulder screamed at me when I tried to catch my body’s weight on both hands.

Nai hurled a small mote of flame at the Vorak, and it leapt behind a drift where snow had piled up. It was a deceptively small piece of fire, but I knew firsthand that even the smallest piece could go through steel like butter.

The small fire was a cover for Nai to cultivate a much bigger one, a massive teal bonfire that poured off enough heat for me to feel it even forty feet away.

Their mote put a clean melted hole through the drift with a sizzle, missing the otter, but the Vorak wasn’t trying to hide for more than a second.

Out of sight, it had built up more energy than before. Its charged shockwave blew apart the snow drift, throwing it into the blaze Nai had built up. The ice flash evaporated on contact with the alien flames. What could have been a ton of ice turned to steam in just a second.

A thick white cloud of vapor washed over everything.

I blinked tears away and climbed to my feet. Nai was the only ally I had, if I could get their attention without getting immediately killed, maybe they would still—

The wall behind me exploded as more crystal spikes drove through it, more than a dozen this time. They were enormous. I could have been standing almost twenty feet from the wall and they still could have skewered me.

Daniel saved my life again.

Just like the moment where I’d killed the panther-hound, Daniel moved somehow inside my mind. For a split second, everything washed away, and I found myself able to think clearly.

The whole moment lasted only a few heartbeats.

Chief’s bouquet of spikes lanced toward me and in the same motion, the otter itself burst through the wall too, letting its own attack carry it forward, toward me.

I twisted, just enough to slip between the spikes that would have impaled me.

In the same movement I saw its gaze falter.

It had been totally fixated on me, but something distracted it. For just a second, its eyes had found Nai and their fire somewhere in the cloud of steam. Chief’s eyes froze, like it couldn’t quite believe what it was seeing.

The Farnata had been totally unexpected.

Nai curled the violent eddies of teal-fire around them, amassing the flames in front of them and pushing them forward in a massive holocaust, too large for a shockwave to disperse.

It washed over the other Enumius Vorak. They let out another shockwave, this one at the ground, and blasted themselves clear of Nai’s fire tide.

Pieces of wall were strewn about, and clear crystal dust hung on the air where Chief had blown right through the building to attack me. Frigid snow hung in the air along with the steam from Nai’s clash with the Vorak.

It was utter chaos, and I lost track of where I stood. My radar told me where the other aliens were, but not the building, not the obstacles, and certainly not where I needed to run.

With a snarl, Chief leapt at me again, straight for me even before the steam and dust had blown away to properly see again. I barely ducked under the leap. It passed over me, contorting its body as it flew by trying to swipe at me.

Too quick .

I’d seen it on the Vorak’s face. It had been caught off guard by Nai. But in the very next moment, it had found me without missing a step.

As a matter of fact, it had attacked me three times now with the spikes, without being able to see me. Even Nai didn’t seem to create their flames out of sight. Probably too risky.

But Chief had attacked me without laying eyes on me.

How?

It had been too fast to locate me in the midst of our brush with Nai. It had been just as surprised as I had been about Nai’s sudden appearance.

I knew why I had been surprised. The Farnata hadn’t registered on my radar properly, like something was muffling the signal somehow…

The mirror.

It was the only thing Daniel and I had made in our head that was no longer present. I wasn’t even sure if it was possible to eliminate the things I’d imagined in my head, but I knew from experience that it was somehow possible to get those same things into other people’s minds.

When I’d done it by accident, I’d imagined trying to combine metaphors. Mirrors reflect light, and real radar just used an invisible form of real light. It was certain that there was no actual light or mirrors at play here, but the metaphor stood.

Nai had radiated a signal that I could detect. In order to try and wake them up, I’d tried to leave the mirror in their mind, reflecting their own signal back into their brain. And, bonus, it had even worked.

But now, that signal was bouncing back on itself rather than being picked up by me.

So Nai was harder to detect.

So they had surprised me.

But the Enumius Farnata had also surprised Chief. But why? I’d been surprised… because I’d been relying on my radar and not paying enough attention to my other five senses.

And suddenly it clicked for both Daniel and me.

How Chief found me, attacked me three times without seeing me, and the extra feedback it was giving off when we detected it.

“”