Chapter Two

(Mackenzie)

"Would you like more coffee?"

The elf girl waits for no reply but rather pours another mug from the Tupperware pitcher, its lime plastic scuffed from years of birthday parties and picnics and lazy Sunday afternoons when Mack would lounge on the backyard patio after a long day of skateboarding and indulge in a tall glass of raspberry Kool-Aid. It's just as he remembers. All of it: the Texas evening sky, the flimsy wicker chairs, the cracked patio deck, the meticulously mowed lawn and the red brick house that his parents sold years ago.

Beyond the fence, however, the illusion breaks. Like pastoral ruins from a Baroque painting, the neighboring houses are ramshackle derelicts overgrown in vines--a picturesque backdrop. The elf girl's wrong too. He doesn't remember any elf.

He sips his coffee, which has turned to raspberry Kool-Aid. He doesn't mind. The elf girl's a pretty thing, tall and waifish with long black hair that flows over knife ears and frames a thin, sharp-chinned face with pale arctic eyes just a bit too wide to be human. Her green robe is emblazoned with golden runes he almost understands.

Standing across from the round plastic table, she watches with blank anticipation before saying in her calm, even voice, "The surgical procedures are complete. You should wake up soon. Authorities are incoming."

He downs the rest of the mug (the Daffy Duck one, the one that broke when he was twelve). The raspberry flavor tastes like cherry now. Or orange. Or like whatever he thinks about.

"This isn't real," he says. "I'm on a street corner, pacing in a circle and jabbering. If the cops show up, they'll just throw me in the crazy tank again. I'll be out in a couple days. At least I'll get free food and a shower."

"This isn't real," she says, gesturing a thin, white hand around her. "This is a simulated reality generated by your hippocampus implants. But you are not on a street corner. You are not pacing in a circle. You are lying beside the drop pod. The authorities are unlikely to release you. You are no longer human."

"Uh-huh." Mack snorts and shakes his head. The coffee mug is full again. He sips chocolate milk. "What the hell did I take? Psychotic episodes usually aren't this . . . laid back."

"The nanites have repaired the chemical damage to your brain. Your mental faculties are not impaired." Her face remains impassive, but he can sense urgency in her tone.

"So . . . I should run from the cops, because an elf in a dream told me I'm an alien. Yep, no mental impairment there. I'm a paragon of sanity."

The elf opens her small mouth, but Mack raises a hand and says, "If it's all the same to you, I think I'm going to stay right here. Maybe take a nice long bath in my magic memory-dream-tub. If I'm crazy, I may as well enjoy it while it lasts, right?"

Her expression hardens. He sees, or perhaps senses, an inhuman resolve behind her remote eyes. "No," she says. "There is no time. You will wake up now."

The elf turns to fog, and the patio, the backyard and all the world drains of color and swirls to a nothing gray. Mack falls, screams--

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He is lying on his back. He hears sirens. He sits up, expecting to feel the telltale aches of a rough night. But his head is clean, and his limbs are light as feathers, their movements smooth, painless and full of vigor. He bounds his feet and spins, gazes around.

His peripheral has been stretched to a godlike letterbox. The alleyway walls on either side are clear to him, and he can even make out the shutter doors to his rear. He looks at his arms, his body. He is made of mirrors. The tight, interlocking plates, highlighted in black, fashion an impossibly lithe musculature.

I'm a skinny Silver Surfer, he thinks. The sirens grow louder, closer, as if right down the street. Oh, shit.

"Elf girl!" he shouts to the sky in a voice of modulated iron. "Elf girl! Tell me what to do!"

~You must hide. You must flee. I will show you the way.

Thoughts not his own gestate, and he knows.

Outside the alleyway, around the corner, the sirens cry louder. Police vans screech as they brake to a halt. Vehicle doors slide open. Mack looks down as his mercurial body turns first translucent and then vanishes. Invisible wings flare from his back; thruster plates pry open. He feels the tickle of their exhaust against his metal thighs.

Mack spares a moment to look at the now eviscerated egg. Embedded in the asphalt crater, its metal skin is peeled and splayed flowerlike, the internal components consumed, leaving behind only a gray metallic goo. This is where my previous life ends, he thinks, where my new life begins.

The SWAT team appear at the mouth of the alley. Swaddled in body armor, assault rifles at the ready, they stalk forward like a pack of nervous wolves. One pauses and points at the egg, and then at the heat-shimmered air of Mack's thrusters. They hesitate. Though no one can see him, Mack raises up his fists in a pantomime of Superman's up, up and away.

And he blasts off.

The alleyway recedes beneath him, shrinks into the labyrinthine expanse of Sheepshead Bay. He is flying. Like a superhero. Racing-yet-calm, distant-yet-immanent, never has he felt so clear.

This is real. This is really happening.

~Yes, Mack, this is real.

Behind his metal face, Mack grins. This is my second chance, isn't it?

~If you choose to interpret it that way.

The g-forces exhilarate. His heart beats yet he does not breath. There is no need. Trickled thoughts like demon murmurs churn his depths. As he accelerates further into the afternoon sky, his wings rolling him gently, he thinks, You said I'm no longer human.

~That is true, the elf girl replies. He can see her in the corner of his mind.

Then what am I?

~You are more.