Chapter 3: Complicating Matters

Paulie gave the other two officers a look as they walked out of the building and into the relative hustle and bustle of the packed market streets beyond. While he was familiar with the four-armed insectoid viltess as the alien had been on duty with officer Sasfren before, he had not yet met the other vekegh officer that walked to his immediate left.

He nodded to them and tried to strike up a conversation, the pink-furred alien’s long fuzzy tail lashed angrily as they hissed, “Don’t talk to me. You are under supervision apocalypser. You shouldn't even exist..” It sounded like the hostile officer wanted to say more, but they were cut off as Sasfren chirped at them loudly.

“Officer Visk.” She turned to look at him while her lower body continued to slither forwards. “You will refrain from harassing your charge, do I make myself clear?” Her expression petals flared wide and flashed a deep scarlet as her anger was broadcast wide. Paulie saw more than one casual bystander recoil from the display as if stung. It seemed that more than one knew what it meant and nobody wanted to get in the way of a pissed off adjudicator if they could at all avoid it.

The new officer, apparently named Visk, grunted and flared the breathing slits at the base of their neck as their small otter-like earls flicked. Apparently not amused nor acclimated to Paulie’s presence. Paulie shook his head and looked at Jakiikii who just shrugged all six of her shoulders at once at the display.

Officer Sasfren glanced back at him and then remarked, “Officer Visk, take point. You know where we are going.” The vekegh man complied without a word, but the longer hair on the back of their neck stood on end, the thick pink fur clearly showing their stress. As she slowed to walk at his and Jakiikii’s side, she turned her feline face towards them. “Sorry about that, he is new on the force and already had to go through a double round of rejuvenation treatments to fix some injuries incurred in a shootout.”

As she said it, it reminded Paulie of her injured friend. “Hey, Sasfren..” She looked over towards him with a flat expression, “How is Jexx doing? I heard he came out of the coma from Mack, but nothing else.”

Sasfren tilted her head slightly as her expression softened before taking on a decidedly more worried air before she nodded slowly. The universal gesture seemingly understood across the vast species and cultural divides that separated their respective peoples. “Jexx is doing much better. His mate and three pups were in to visit him today, he still thanks you for saving his life. He wanted to see you actually, to thank you in person. But even with me and Mack asking we didn’t get clearance for you to go to the hospital.” She glanced away, her normally stoic voice cracking as her hissing speech stuttered a little from emotion. “He, uh.. he doesn't blame me for freezing up. But zalc, I did. I should have been there at his side, not watching him get shot!” She swore again under her breath, too low for even Paulie’s hearing to catch it. But her tone was clear.

He couldn't just sit there and watch the alien beat herself up about the whole thing, especially when it was all his fault in the first place. She had done what anyone might have done in that situation. He tried to tell her so, but she waved his words away.

“No.” Paulie frowned as the maggastium woman’s petals flushed a dark indigo. “No, it is his right to forgive me. But I have not yet forgiven myself. I’m not sure I can.”

Jakiikii leaned past Paulie to pat the woman on the upper part of her tentacle arm suddenly. “I know what it feels like, to feel like you could have done something better.. or different? But I am here to tell you, hold onto the feeling. Hold it tight, but don’t let it consume you inside. Instead turn that anger and pain into a driving force to be better, to find the ones who made you hurt. And to make them feel each and every ounce of that hurt a hundredfold in return.” She growled the last part darkly, Paulie’s eyebrows raising as she said it.

Officer Sasfren looked a little surprised too, but if she objected to the notion then she didn’t raise a complaint. Instead she just looked off to the left as if seeing something in the distance that required great scrutiny.

He had to admit, it was solid advice if you wanted to go on some sort of vengeance quest. That thought gave him pause, was Jakiikii really so consumed by the pains of her past? He really needed to take the time to ask her more about her childhood. Maybe if he could help her to pass on some of the pain then she would let go of the anger that she had shown, he realised just how self-centered he had been acting around her for the last few days.

Paulie shook his head at the thought as they rounded another busy corner. The streets were just as packed as they always seemed to be, full of vibrant alien shapes and sounds. The smells of a thousand worlds assaulting his senses like a physical force. It took him a long minute to really get his mental bearings back, his emotions wandering along a tangent like it were a guided tour of his subconscious. He felt the jargon worm embedded in his brain squirm as it tried to reach a dark mental tendril out towards him but he slapped it down with a thought.

“No, not today.” He muttered aloud.

Jakiikii gave him a sideways look, two of her six eyes turning upon their flexible petals to peer at him curiously. “What?” Was all she asked.

He waved a hand. His errant emotions slowly being brought back to heel, “It’s nothing. Really. I was just lost in thought.” But he wasn’t. He hated lying to her, but he wasn’t sure he really wanted to involve anyone else into his internal problems with everything else that was going on. From what he had been able to gather it wasn’t exactly common for the biological translator parasites to act in such a manner, if at all. But act up it did, and constantly.

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In fact he had noticed the parasite getting more and more brazen with its mental attacks. Just three days before he had been interrupted in the middle of a verbal interview to wrestle with the stupid thing, much to his own embarrassment and the confusion of his interviewer.

He growled and shoved the dark shadow back from the walls of the cage he had built for it in his mind. It seemed to be getting stronger all the time, pushing up against the bars of its prison as if it were growing too large to be contained. So he did the only thing he could think of, he layered on another wall to contain the one that was crumbling. Thus delaying further the inevitable.

He didn’t like thinking about it, maybe he was supposed to let it out? The others didn’t seem to struggle so much with their jargon worms. Were humans simply incompatible with them as the zen’kkalkians had alluded to? No, there had to be another explanation. He couldn't believe that he was the most unlucky bastard in the universe, karma couldn’t be that cruel. He snorted to himself, sure it could.

Paulie’s attention turned back to the problem fast approaching, namely the fact that the raid on Ooounoo was drawing ever nearer. He shifted uncomfortably as they walked, glancing at Jakiikii. She seemed so confident about the entire matter. The fact that she had been on numerous smaller but similar raids over the years had likely bolstered her resolve on the issue, but he had no such experience to draw from. No, the closest thing he had to such conflicts was the recent attack on Mack and some playground brawls he had been in as a youth.

He stepped over a crack in the grey pavement and swallowed heavily. The tension in his gut only magnified the solid knot in his stomach. He felt nauseous as they walked through the brick and concrete labyrinth that was the bustling streets of Korscam.

Jakiikii seemed to notice his discomfort as she made a small gesture to get his attention and then asked quietly, “Are you feeling alright? You look a little pale, and normally I am the one who is supposed to change colors.” She chuckled a little, eliciting a small smile from him in return.

Paulie rubbed the back of his neck as he let out a heavy sigh. He adjusted his great coat and nodded at her sharply. “Yes, I am. I just feel a little..” He stopped, a bit at a loss for words.

She stepped a little closer and nudged him with two of her arms. “Not to worry, you have the rest of the day off. And you are going to need it, you are assigned to officer Tell’eal tomorrow remember?” Paulie groaned slightly and Jakiikii giggled horsley. “Oh come on, she isn’t that bad right?”

He shook his head as they moved through the crowded street and around a corner to what looked like a set of stairs that disappeared below the surface of the road. “It isn’t that she is bad. In fact she is very very good at what she does. But what she does is push me harder than Sisyphus pushes that boulder of his.” Jakiikii cocked her angular head, a few of her eye-petals moving as if trying to look through him. In all fairness, the mendagoonian woman was well known for her strict nature and ability to drag the best from people, usually kicking and screaming the whole way. He chuckled.

They started down the steps, Sasfren and officer Visk taking point with their hands on their belts as the unknown viltess officer took up their rear, their insectoid eyes scanning the street for potential threats. As they reached the bottom Jakiikii spoke reverently, “I have worked with her before. She isn’t easily impressed, that one.”

Paulie nodded sadly. “You know I beat my PR in the hundred-meter sprint two days ago, I shattered the complex’s record by such a large margin it wasn’t even funny…” She nodded. Paulie threw up his hands and spoke a little heatedly, causing the vekegh officer next to him to jerk slightly and hiss in annoyance. “You know what she said when I asked her what she thought?”

Jakiikii shook her head and he heard officer Sasfren laugh from the other side of the termaxxi. The maggastium’s feline features poked into view, her colorful display petals flashing a silvery orange as she asked, “Let me guess, she asked if that was the best you could do?”

Paulie smiled wide. “Yeah. That’s exactly what she said. I am guessing you had to deal with her too?”

Officer Sasfren nodded, one of her boneless looking arms pointing them down the grey tiled hall they had entered. “Yes, many times. Down the left hand side please, I don’t suspect anything is going to happen but I would rather not get another strike.” He thought he could hear a bit of bitterness in her hissing chirps, but even with his parasitic translator it was hard to be certain.

They had come through a very similar place to get to the mall in the first place so he knew the drill. The subterranean chamber they soon found themselves in rumbled ominously, the sound of metal on metal and the pinging expansion of steam pipes could be heard over the muted conversations from the crowded room. The damp, grimy floors were bare duracrete and the tiled walls were rust stained and covered in faded holographic advertisements that promised any number of fantasies to be granted should one simply swipe their cred-ident and transfer a few osmir.

Presently, a large object trundled slowly into view. It was huge, its grimy outer skin the color of bleached bones with a long red stripe down one side. It was some manner of public transportation he had discovered upon their first excursion.

He had heard one of the others refer to it as the underbus, but as it seemed to levitate over the track without any support that he could ascertain he was more inclined to think of it as a floating train. He thought about it as he tried to remember the correct term, ‘A maglev.’ He said inside his head, silently.

Another thought seemed to answer him, a dark finger of self doubt that scorned him. ‘Primitive.’ It was the parasite again, he turned his mind’s eye upon it and the thing slunk back into the dark corners of his mind with an insane cackle.

He shook it off, he wasn’t about to let something as simple as a testy brain inhabiting parasite get him down on a day like today. That wasn't to say that he was ignoring the danger it seemed to pose, but he was not going to live in fear. No, he pushed the fear and panic back down alongside the anger and hatred that seemed to always buble just under the surface of his mind like a poisonous ocean of raw emotion.

Taking just a moment to recollect himself, Paulie followed Jakiikii as she and the officers boarded the third car of the underbus. He sat in the seat that Sasfren indicated and leaned back into the wall with a small sigh of relief. He wasn’t exactly tired out, it was only about midway through the day after all. But he was feeling a little more drained than usual and he looked forward to getting home so he could relax and watch more of the various alien television shows he had discovered.

It turned out that with thousands of years of entertainment history at his fingertips, he could find just about anything he wanted to suit his viewing pleasure. And right now he was three quarters of the way through what he assumed was some manner of fantastical survival show. Though not knowing the specifics of the wide variety of worlds the GGI had under its umbrella of control, it could very well have been a reality TV show and he would likely not have been able to tell the difference.

The underbus hummed and then with a sharp jolt, it was off. The windows slowly changed from a view of the large crowded terminal to the enclosed and darkened walls of the transport tunnel it moved through.

Paulie looked around, the car they were in wasn’t too crowded. But it was still full of citizens all going about their daily business as if there was nothing strange about the profusion of alien forms that surrounded them. And they were right. He was the alien, a concept that he was still coming to terms with even all these days later. It brought a frown to his face and doubts to his heart that settled deep down next to the despair that he had hidden at the back of his mind.

After all, what was a man to do in such a strange environment where even the familiar was alien and every other person was potentially a threat in disguise?