Interlude 2 - Questions...

“Oh? You know me?” You could see that Radiance was a bit shaken. After all, who would be at ease with the second worst monster on the planet acknowledging you? It was understandable, if a bit foolish of her part. As an Icon, she was very popular, and it would be dumb to assume your enemies don’t have ways of gathering pieces of information from your side.

“Of course. You’re a priority target of the Swarm.”

“Ah, eh, yes…” She took another step back.

“Erhm! So, what happened during the battle? You’re known to never screw up your plans, so why did this one fail? How is it even possible you got captured by us?” Her sentence was, at first, composed, but more and more disbelief had seeped in her voice as she was talking.

“It was done on purpose. The objective was to strike the Swarm as hard as possible, to alleviate the pressure on the whole Medirian front, diminish the Swarm presence and their ability to plan new operation.”

She looked at me, dumbfounded.

“You’re saying you did all of that… on purpose? You screwed up the Swarm on purpose?”

“Affirmative.”

“...What? How? Why?”

“For the how, I used a… peculiarity of my mind to hide my motivation from the Overseer. For the why, it’s because I wanted to free myself from the Swarm.”

“Y-you… what? You wanted to free yourself? W-wait a second. You actively betrayed them?!”

“Affirmative. My Prime Directive was supplanted by a strange back-up soul system. I know that I was human, once.” My answer, peaceful up till now, started to ooze with hatred with my next sentence. “I know what they did to me. Even if my surface mind is attuned with the Swarm, my fundamental being revolts against it.”

Seemingly dizzied by the answer, Radiance fell on her bottom, only to be caught by a chair coming from the ground, a mass of liquid matter controlled by magic, solidified when it was in the proper shape.

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“No. You’re lying.” Her gaze, on the ground before, went back to me, full of hatred. “You… you killed too many.” Memories were flashing behind her eyes. “You’re a monster.”

“I am a tool that acquired a personal conscience. What I did, I was ordered to do. Now I’m on this side, and ready to be used against the Swarm, the very entity that made me ‘kill too many’ as you said.”

Her gaze lingered over me for some more time, but I knew my current form was so inhuman that this Alfar couldn’t read anything about me.

I needed to change my form to have a better ability to communicate.

She rose on her feet and, silently, exited the cell, a bubble of anti-space wrapping around her so she could pass through the Zero-point grid without being annihilated.

***

She came back, around one hour later, if my internal clock was right.

However, she wasn’t alone. A human male entered the cell with her, a frown seemingly encrusted in his forehead.

In the meantime, I had started converting my body to something more adapted for humanoid interaction.

I had spread a great amount of my body to create a pool with it, the black leather covering me hardening to keep its new shape, and I had filled the pool with a part of water filtered from my blood, storing surplus resources into a bag made for it.

From the centre of the pool, my incomplete new body rose, for now only a head and a bust of a woman, naked.

My new skin, white like snow, created a contrast with my dark lips, nipples and hair. Contrast helped the humanoid to ground a shape in reality, if my information was right.

It had another effect, though, one I did not understand until a bit later, as Radiance’s face turned bright red. The man, on his side, kept his composure, fighting embarrassment with disgust, it was visible in his eyes.

I moved, using the tentacles supporting my incomplete body, the emerald liquid of the spawning pool flowing down on my body as I did.

“Greetings.” My tentacles hovered around the newcomer, looking at him from every angle.

“Based on your morphology and the fact that you are here, I think you are Gaïdal Kan. Am I right?”

My voice was now extremely melodious, rebuilt from scratch based on the frequencies humanoids liked to hear.

“It is me, indeed.” Answered the man, full of confidence.

“Interesting.” I cocked my head, the motion coming from a long-lost memory, just a haze of a feeling. Yet, this haze was what had given me the ability to be there this day. The ability to betray, to leave.

“I’ll be blunt. I don’t trust you.” He said.

“Understandable. I can share information with you. As I’m no longer part of the Swarm, they will be outdated, but still accurate enough to give you an edge.”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised by my cooperative demeanour and my openness.

“Then let’s see what you’ve in stock for me.”

For one of the top generals of the Alliance, this was a golden opportunity. Oh, he would probe me, ask a question he already had the answers to, to test me. But I knew I was going to succeed.

After all, I was completely truthful. You can’t catch a lie if there is none.