Tennama started by saying, “By now I suspect you already know how and why we were created.”

“Yes,” Reyer said.

“Then I won’t have to explain that we weren’t exactly willing participants in our creation. By the time we had enough sentience to understand ourselves, we were already far from home and captive to a race of people who knew nothing about us. We had no one to explain what we were experiencing. Harlan—the xeno I knew as Harlan…” Tennama’s voice trailed away. He suddenly asked, “Who do you think of him as?”

“Jack Harlan,” Reyer said with equal abruptness.

“Not Ivan Rurik?”

“No.”

Tennama nodded once, then continued, “Harlan and I gathered as much information as we could, but most of what we were experiencing, we had to work out on our own. Over time we realized there was a sensation common to us that wasn’t due to our human bodies. We called it ‘the longing.’ It’s like a constant ache—a pulling. We were most comfortable around each other, but it never completely went away. We began to suspect it had something to do with our home planet and that there might be another xeno. One that was above us.”

“Above you?” Reyer said.

Tennama tapped a finger on the arm of the chair as he tried to think of the words he’d need.

“Miss Reyer, we’re made different from each other. We have different levels…ranks—maybe you can understand that?—and we can sense each other’s relative positions in the hierarchy when we’re close to each other. At first we didn’t understand what made us different, but we quickly learned that most xenos could only carry the memories of the bodies they’d inhabited through one, possibly two, incarnations. Some were so weak they could only carry a few memories forward. Harlan and I didn’t have that problem. Five, six, seven bodies—it didn’t matter. Taking memories is never a perfect process, but if we had them, we didn’t lose them.”

“You were their leaders.”

Alix had muttered it to herself, but Tennama heard her.

“The others felt subservient,” he said, “as if they were created to bow to us.”

“And you thought there was someone above you?”

“Yes, and the more we learned about ourselves, the more convinced we became. Our distress made us desperate to find answers.”

A voice from the past broke into Reyer’s thoughts: “The conniving monster has been looking for the xeno home planet for decades.”

Thinking of the man must have summoned his name; Tennama said, “It was difficult. In many ways, General Gardner was a good warder, but we knew that, every once in a while, there would be a chance to escape his custody.”

“How?”

“During our missions, there might be a time when our Supremacy handlers believed we were dead, or perhaps they were dead, and we no longer had anyone keeping track of us. Harlan and I trained the xenos to look for these chances. Everyone had two sets of orders—the official mission orders, and our orders. But the opportunities were rare. Only five of us ever managed to escape.”

“You were one of them,” Reyer realized. “That’s why your name wasn’t on any of the lists.”

The xeno nodded.

“But you went back to Project 32! Is that how you decided it’d be best to use your new-found freedom?”

“Yes.”

His quiet answer silenced her.

“Harlan needed my help,” he said. “We needed each other.”

“To find the planet?”

“An officer in the Supremacy MI should’ve been ideally placed for tracking down that information, but it turned out that the Supremacy didn’t know where our home plant was.”

“Ivan Rurik did.”

There was a groan mixed in with Tennama’s laugh.

“It was the most evil miracle you could imagine. A sadistic genie couldn’t have done better. Rurik had been there. He’d seen one of us! We knew it was our home planet! But when Harlan took Rurik’s mind, he didn’t remember the location—”

“But he remembered me.”

“Well, Miss Reyer, you’re hard to forget.”

“Stop it.”

Reyer had hissed the words with enough poison to kill the conversation.

In the outer room, Jane Bonumomnes leaned toward the one-way glass, unconsciously touching the surface. She’d been too absorbed by the story the xeno was telling to realize how tense Reyer had become, but now she could see Alix’s fingers were white where they were pressing into her folded arms.

“Is she going to be okay?” Jane asked.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

General Jordan’s deep voice rumbled through the room: “Please step away from the glass, Doctor.”

Jane moved so the others could see.

Inside the interrogation room, Reyer forced herself to take a few breaths.

Tennama said, “I’m sorry, Miss Reyer.”

Alix shook her head to dismiss the apology. Then she raised her eyes.

“You went to the planet,” she said.

“We did. That’s when we learned we were right.”

“Were you with Harlan’s party?”

“I was the sleeper—the xeno that no one knew about. I stayed behind in case something went wrong.”

“That was wise of you.”

Tennama looked down to hide his grimace. “It was. When I didn’t hear from Harlan after five days, I took a ship and went to go get him. It was then that I learned we had been right.”

There were dozens of questions battering at Reyer’s mind, but when she opened her mouth, what came out wasn’t one of them.

“Harlan is dead.”

It was important to Reyer that Harlan was dead. Saying it helped to quell the anxiety that was making her stomach blanch.

“The being that you think of as Harlan is mostly dead.”

“What does that mean?”

“The body he occupied—the one he stole from Corporal Rurik—has decomposed and returned to the swamp—”

“He took another body. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“No, someone else took him.”

Through her numbness, Reyer became aware of a voice in her ear.

“She says that’s wrong,” Adan said. “Alix! Jane says a xeno won’t take over another xeno.”

In the interrogation room, Reyer repeated, “A xeno won’t take over another xeno.”

“Not normally, no,” Tennama said, “but a queen will take over a memory-keeper.”

Vas’s voice was in her ear again: “Jane is having a conniption out here.” He was not exaggerating, Reyer could hear her friend in the background. “Please get him to explain.”

Alix looked at Tennama. “What’s a memory-keeper?”

“That’s what Harlan called us.”

“Us, the xenos?”

“Us, the memory-keepers. Me and him. We were the only ones.”

“You mean the leaders? The high ranking xenos.”

“Yes.”

“And the queen?”

“She was the one above us—the one we had expected to be there. The others had always tried to describe it, but it wasn’t until I was standing in front of her that I understood.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The subservience. It’s like a giant hand pressing your soul into the ground.”

“She was that powerful? Even catatonic?”

Tennama’s brow creased with confusion.

“It was her first body,” Alix said.

“You don’t understand.” Tennama leaned forward despite the restraints. “She didn’t take over a human. She took over Harlan. Memory-keepers are powerful. She was ranks above us. When she rose, she remembered. She’d taken his body, and she’d taken all of his minds. She knew I would be coming for her. When I arrived, she was waiting for me.”

From her earbud, Reyer heard a confusion of voices: “Alix—” “No! Let me ask her—” A noise, then, “Alix”—it was Jane—“ask him why he calls him a queen.”

“Why do you call him a queen?” When Tennama didn’t answer, Reyer added, “Harlan was a male. Did he switch bodies?”

“No!—” Jane’s wail was cut off when Vas snatched his com back so Reyer could focus on what Tennama was saying.

There was a faint smirk on the xeno’s face. “Gender terms mean a lot less when you might be in a different body the next day. The queen did switch bodies. The last I know, she’s a female, but we’ve always called her a queen.”

“We, as in, you and Harlan? Why?”

Tennama gazed around the room, as if he was searching for a way to explain. He returned his eyes to her when nothing presented itself. With a trace of resignation, he asked, “How much do you know about Old Earth animals, Miss Reyer?”

“Almost nothing.”

“Do you know anything about bees?”

Alix could almost imagine the scene that would be going on in the outer room. Ciro was probably trying to hold Jane back while Vas checked to make sure the sound-proof door was completely sealed. Her guess was right, but because the door was sealed, she had no way of knowing.

It was a quirk of the human race. Every child was taught about Old Earth. Reyer had never been to a day of traditional schooling in her life, but there had been several occasions when someone sat her down and showed her pictures of animals from a planet she’d never see.

It mattered. It was home. People felt that you should know where you came from.

Everyone could name the big, important animals: lions, elephants, whales, and bears. Someone might teach you about their favorite, so you’d learn about horses, dolphins, or monkeys. Reyer remembered Ito showing her a red fox after she asked about kitsune. In general, people were less familiar with insects, but you were taught about spiders (only biologists, such as Jane, knew they weren’t insects), and you were taught about bees.

Reyer knew almost nothing, but even she knew that bees had a queen.

“That’s how you reproduce, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Only her?”

“They’re the only ones who can produce untransformed xenos. If my guess is right, there would be very few queens in a pool. When they took us from our home, it’s not surprising they failed to get one.”

“How do you—is it like bees? Doesn’t the queen bee…need male bees?”

Tennama scoffed. “You wanted to know why we called her a queen. I never said the parallel was exact. She doesn’t need us, but we needed her.”

“And now you want my help killing her.”

Tennama’s gaze fell to the table in front of him. He didn’t say anything, and he only looked up when Reyer spoke again.

“You took her off-planet.”

Tennama nodded.

“How much xeno matter did you take with you?”

He only stared at her.

She raised her voice. “The untransformed xenos. How many—”

“None.”

“What?”

“She wouldn’t let me take any.”

Reyer blinked. After a moment, she said, “Why not?”

“She didn’t say, and I couldn’t—” He paused. “I found it difficult to ask.”

In her ear, she heard Vas say, “Jane says that’s typical. Something about childbearing animals favoring their offspring. You can let it go, Alix.”

Reyer raised her eyes. “Where did you take her when you left your home world?”

“I took her back to my apartment. She stayed with me for two months as she made plans.”

Despite how quiet and even Tennama’s voice had been, Reyer felt an icy thread crawl from her neck all the way down to her fingertips. She had sensed, more than heard, the lag between the each of the last three words.

“This is why you want me to help you kill her, isn’t it?” she said. “You don’t like something about her plans.”

Tennama took a deep breath. Reyer saw his chest rise and fall. When he spoke, it was in that same quiet, even voice.

“You have to understand, Miss Reyer, Harlan and I both wanted to find our home planet, but all I ever wanted was to take a queen somewhere far away and safe.”

“Safe from who?”

Anthony hesitated, but then nodded to her. “Safe from you. Safe from humans.” He waited for a reaction. When there was none, he continued, “Harlan had other plans. He believed humans were the strongest race in the galaxy, and the only way to be safe was to create worlds full of human-xenos so we could fight you on your terms.”

Reyer’s body grew cold.

“His plans were”—Anthony dashed his fingers to the side—“ludicrous. The scope of it was impossible. And the death toll! Night after night, we would argue. In the end, he said he could understand my objections, but by then, I think he didn’t trust me. He could’ve easily been lying. It made me uneasy. And it was so much worse when I saw the queen standing there, at the edge of the pool. It was Harlan, but this time, there would be no discussion.”

“You think the queen adopted Harlan’s plan?”

“I know she did."