Earth

2027

Something was wrong.

Theo heard Rory's voice over the phone, but he still felt he couldn't reach her.

"I promise, I'm fine," Rory said. "I was shaken up by what happened to Jace and scared that I would get you hurt too."

Theo couldn't wait to act. Rory would have contacted him by now. The text messages and the short phone calls did nothing to lessen the deep throb in his gut that told him something very bad had happened to his wife.

"Rory–"

"Theo…" Her voice broke. "I already lost Jace once. I almost lost him again. I can't lose you too."

The pang of sympathy undercut his worry. Maybe Theo was wrong to question her.

"We tell each other everything," he said. "No matter what. There's never been a day that's gone by where we didn't share it all. It's like you suddenly left."

Rory quieted for a few seconds. Her voice was laden with tears when she spoke again. "I'm sorry, Theo. I'm lost. I thought I was doing the right thing by sending all that information out, but I don't know anymore."

"What did Vehru do to you?"

"She told me if I shared anything with you, then she'd hurt you too," Rory said. "I can't let that happen. All I can say is this. Morfrain tried to get Jace to take a biosynthetic body and become commander. He refused." She hesitated. "I told them we would do it."

"What?" Theo couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"We can't win this war as we are. Vehru fought me on it. Morfrain wants me to do it. I don't know what will happen, but I'm in trouble after what I did."

He could barely register what she'd said about the body. Later he'd analyze that decision to see if it made sense and decide on whether he agreed. Theo pinched his nose and slumped down in his chair. Only one thing mattered right now. "I need to see you."

"Vehru doesn't want–"

"Since when do you let what Vehru wants stop you?"

"Morfrain almost killed Jace. He could snap and have you dead."

Theo gripped the phone tighter. "Either I see you, or I go to Vehru myself. I don't care what anyone says, not even you. I'm not letting go of you, Rory."

"Theo–"

"Something's not right."

"They're watching me. I'll try to get out. Look, I have to go. Just wait for me, Theo."

He shook his head. No more waiting. "It'll be okay, Rory. I promise."

"What does that mean?"

"I love you."

A beat of quiet. "I love you too. I don't want to go, but I have to. I promise I'll explain more when I can. Bye, Theo."

He closed his eyes. "Bye, Rory."

When he hung up, he immediately opened the door and shouted to one of the soldiers always posted outside of his room.

"Put me in contact with Vehru," he said. "It'll be easy to get her attention. Take me some place to meet her. Alone."

The soldier didn't react and Theo wasn't waiting for his permission.

"Tell General Price he can arrange this, or I can. And I'm sure he'd like to have control over the meeting."

Theo slammed the door shut.

If Rory couldn't commit to seeing him immediately, then he needed to go to the source of the problem. He could not wait to figure out what was going on with his wife.

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Theo glanced back at the helicopter and soldiers waiting for him as he walked deeper into the field where he'd meet Vehru. He didn't even know where they were.

General Price insisted on listening in through a wire and Theo didn't care enough to fight him. If Vehru didn't like it, then surely she'd know and cut the connection.

A form glistened overhead and Theo looked up as Vehru descended from the sky. As soon as she landed, she shook her head.

"General," Vehru said. "I don't want an audience. Interrupt us and I'll take Theo some place you can't find him." She extended her hand.

Theo ripped the earbud from his ear and passed it to Vehru. She crushed the microphone and tossed it on the ground.

"It's good to see you, Theo," she said.

He gripped his hands into fists. "What did you do to my wife?" Theo drilled Vehru with his glare.

An amused sneer slid onto her face and the lack of any wrinkles on her smooth face jarred him. Her appearance did not match her long life. "You're acting awfully brave for such a wise man. I suppose love can make even you a fool."

"You can't do anything worse to me than take Rory away. There's nothing you can threaten me with right now. I need to know what you did."

Vehru took one heavy step forward, her posture shifting smoothly so her stature looked taller. Her flawless biomechanical body carried an air of terrifying perfection. "I wonder how true that is." Her curious gaze studied him like a puzzle she wanted to put together. "How far could I push you? I know Jace and Rory so well. You're newer to me."

"We're not toys for you to play with."

"No. You're desperate people. Desperate, frightened, unyielding people. You can be so useful, or so incredibly annoying."

Theo swallowed down the intimidation and refused to allow his body to succumb to fear. Early on in high school the guys in his homeroom class mocked him incessantly because of his lanky form and his exuberance for class. Theo always loved learning. He'd learned to hide it as a kid, but his curiosity and fervor, his boredom when school couldn't satisfy that, always leaked out. He'd once been fourteen and paralyzed by a mix of dread and loathing when they tortured him for loving what they feared. For loving learning when it made them feel inadequate. But then Theo stopped cowering from his own strength, stopped allowing their small-mindedness and immaturity to grip him with self-doubt. In a few years, he went from having his lunch literally eaten every day to the same guys slapping his back at parties.

Once he assumed that he needed to match and overcome the physical strength and the ferocity of those attacking him. Beating them turned out to be simpler than that. After that as an adult, when some students and colleagues turned their field of research into a highschool bullying ground, Theo skated by above again, even more easily this time. Sure, he'd been burned before by playing nice, but in his life, choosing the wise path and relying on his thirst for knowledge negated the need to fight. It was like finding an entirely different path.

Staying at Rory's side and loving her through the chaos of first contact and societal divide required a new strength that Theo never needed before. Losing babies and holding onto Rory so she didn't lose herself felt like a war of its own.

This was an actual war, though. He couldn't simply believe in himself and find confidence, or take the high road, or dive deeply into the loyalty and love carried for his wife. Nothing from Theo's past prepared him for facing off with an elegantly crafted superhuman alien who'd spent years precisely sculpting her soul to fight and win this war. Vehru sharpened the edges of herself into the kind of blade that a sociopath like Morfrain wielded easily while retaining the painful, bleeding heart of the woman she'd once been before war overcame her planet. Both intelligent and strong, Vehru outmatched Jace in his combat abilities and Theo in his mind. Her fine-tuned emotional control repeatedly defeated the purity of Rory's profound sense of empathy and justice.

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Vehru and her calculating replicas frightened him far more than Morfrain or the faceless menace of a federation.

So with her scrutinizing him, questioning his resolve and strength, Theo didn't waste any bit of his effort on hiding the obvious. He was scared. Scared for his planet, for himself, for his wife. Scared and hurt. His greatest strength that propelled him to the top of his field and to become such a valuable national security defense asset meant absolutely nothing now. Vehru knew more than Theo. She was smarter and possessed far greater knowledge and tools.

But she was alone. Maybe on their own Theo, Jace, and Rory couldn't match her. What about together? What about with the rest of Earth and with their allies from Lumiea? Did this one woman overpower the combined strength and talents of entire planets?

From the nausea churning in Theo's gut and the sweat hugging the nape of his neck, he worried that maybe she did. He strongly suspected that the slight victories Rory managed so far only strengthened Vehru, because it taught her not to overlook them. None of them would get away with any cheap shots or would easily take her by surprise again.

Vehru surprised Theo then. He expected more intimidation, or for her to subvert his expectations with her twisted and almost convincing show of sympathy. Maybe cold logic. But all the perfection fell to a flawed and vulnerable humanity that cut sharply against the image of her powerful, biomechanical form.

"You didn't have the chance to train like Rory and Jace." Vehru tilted her head, her eyes filled with memories. "They grew up in a world controlled by a far more advanced civilization. But you didn't. You were on the top of the world not long ago. It's terrifying to fall."

Vehru wasn't talking about Theo or the rest of Earth. She was thinking about herself on her home planet when the federation invaded. After all this time, all this evolution, she managed to keep her life as the woman of a conquered planet buried deeply within her. Right now, Vehru allowed Theo to see that person. To see the eyes of a human as determined as she was frightened. The eyes of someone fighting for their world.

It scared him more than anything else could. This was the key to Vehru's brilliance. To live in multiple forms, in the synthetic body and mind she wielded, and in the vulnerable heart of her younger self. She was both a highly advanced federation commander and a fearless rebel warrior at the same time. The fission between the two had transformed her into something much more.

What could Rory accomplish if she became more? This glimpse Vehru allowed him helped him see a path for his wife.

Given the same advantages, he believed Rory could beat Vehru. But would they have the time or opportunity for her to grow?

The mask of inhumanity slid back over Vehru's face. It gave the appearance that she hadn't meant for him to see beneath it. Theo knew better. Vehru controlled even her microexpression with precision. Humans came to dominate the Earth because of their incredibly complex ability to socialize and to pass on knowledge through the generations. He was built to subconsciously read into every twitch and movement of her face. Into her posture and her tone. Vehru knew how to lie to him with more than just her words.

This was not vulnerability she showed him but rather the weaponization of the phantom of her former self.

"I'm sorry this will be so hard for you," she said, the lingering pain in her eyes hardening into a hate hundreds of years in the making. A hate for herself and the federation. For the people of Earth for being as hopeful and hopelessly doomed as she'd once been. "I can't make it any easier on you, especially when you attached yourself to my witness."

Theo smirked, and maybe this surprised Vehru, because she didn't immediately react. "You can conquer a planet all on your own. The Federation doesn't need an army of people or to sacrifice their precious resources to create one of drones. They only need one desperate woman who can conquer worlds and use them to take the next one. It's the cheapest form of domination. They plant one seed and then she produces an entire field of crops on her own with her own resources."

"Very interesting, Theo." The smile tempting Vehru's lips almost looked genuine. "I love finding people who can keep this challenging."

"That's why you picked Rory as your Witness. You enjoy her and Jace. They make you stronger, because they challenge you, and because you can use them."

"Look at what my own seed cultivated. It takes a skilled woman to grow on her own and become the one who plants. Rory chose well."

Theo's chest tightened. "That's a great advantage for you, isn't it? Because you've been in our place, you fully recognize our potential. You respect the power of human relationships and bonds. That's how you'll defeat Morfrain and secure your standing in the federation. Do you really believe you'll do good with it once you're there?"

This time the vulnerability he saw was no less calculating, but much more real. Vehru allowed him to see a fear that she had not yet tamed. "I believe it the way you think you can save your wife and planet."

Their mirrored desperation tore at his chest, so the tightness snapped his ribs and punctured his heart. "Because you once believed that so much you couldn't give up even after you lost."

"Rory won't be able to either. She'll take the synthetic body and she'll think she can do better than me with it, but she won't allow herself to fall to depths I did. This body will kill her. It'll kill her family and maybe her world. I don't want her to take it because failing the federation is far worse than losing a planet."

"But isn't part of you afraid that she'll accomplish what you couldn't?" Theo eyed her, uncertain of whether any part of her worried about this or not. "You're afraid that she'll prove that you never needed to kill so many people. Break so many souls and ruin so many families. Dominate so many worlds."

"I would rather live with the guilt and failure of realizing that than to take one more life."

If Theo believed anything she'd said and shown him today, it was that.

"I know better than anyone how limited your options are once you take a synthetic body and how hard it is to let the federation kill the people you love. To steal from your world the promise of true freedom in the future. I also know the weight of becoming commander. Your wife doesn't want to walk this path, but she will if someone doesn't stop her."

He walked forward, even as his body and soul revolted against closing the distance. Everything screamed at him to run and he defied it. "One day someone will do better than you. You've failed so far, Vehru. You're on the path to becoming a more deadly version of Morfrain, not to overthrowing the current way of the federation. You need us. That's why you collect us and play with us."

She quieted for several seconds. "You and Rory haven't spoken in depth about these plans. You're just that similar. It isn't like that for her and Jace. They're very different. I'm interested to see how the three of joining paths will change you all. Maybe you'll even surprise me."

"If humans once conquered the evolutionary chain through relationships, through our bond to family and clan, then what else might we do? Is this what you're hanging your hopes on?"

Vehru breathed out a long sigh. "You've fought a good battle today, Theo. Well done. My time is up, though. I have things to do."

"Give my wife back to me."

"You think you've earned it?" She didn't hide her snort.

"You won't let me talk to her because you know I'll figure something out."

"What do you think that might be?"

Theo's heart hammered. "I don't know."

Pity overcame Vehru's expression. "You don't know or you don't want to know?"

Jace crept into his mind. Theo remembered his snatching the handmod. The way he'd spoken. Something hadn't been right with him. Not with Rory either. They were doing what Vehru wanted, and they never would do what she wanted.

The uneasiness and fear hollowed out his gut as his eyes widened. He remembered Rory tackling Trin through the window and the way the woman mocked her for the grief of losing her friend to a body snatcher.

Vehru lifted her palm to Theo's cheek. Terror froze him, so he couldn't even flinch as her surprisingly soft skin eased over his. "There it is." Her golden stare delved into his. "Rory wants to save you from pain. I know it'll transform you. So let it come."

Theo sucked in a sharp breath. His voice cracked with grief. "No. You need them."

"That doesn't mean I didn't do it."

He didn't need time to piece everything together and he didn't have the luxury of denial with her outright confirming the suspicions he'd just felt.

"You stole their bodies," he whispered. "You knew I'd be able to tell if I saw Rory."

Vehru's hand slowly lowered. The apparent satisfaction of Theo falling into her plan and the sadness at seeing his pain mixed into something as eerie as anything that fell into the uncanny valley. This version of empathy that resembled something human but clearly wasn't.

"I'll bring her back," Theo said.

"That would be a true accomplishment if you could figure it out."

"There's no way you're done with her. This can't be forever. This can't."

"I don't want to stay for this next part," Vehru said. "You've never really lost anything before."

His life with Rory swelled and surrounded him like an ocean he now drowned in. Part of him knew that this could be it. They pushed their limits and their enemy killed Rory. Vehru was entirely capable of doing that. Facing such an overwhelming enemy, they may have lost much sooner than expected.

But Theo couldn't accept it or even fear it enough to linger on it. He couldn't believe for a moment that he'd lost Rory when he hadn't even gotten the chance to truly fight for her.

Vehru vanished in a flash of heat, leaving Theo to carry the grief she'd struck him with.

And he resented feeling exactly as she wanted. Resented that he'd do what she planned by trying to find a way to break Rory free of the replica's control of her mind, which only begged the question of why. Why would Vehru want him to do this?

But Theo would do anything for Rory, including temporarily doing what Vehru wanted.

He'd just have to find a way to go beyond that.

His knees gave out and he crashed onto the ground, so overwhelmed with pain and terror that he couldn't actually feel it.

Rory was gone.

Maybe not forever, but for now. His wife was gone and he didn't know how to reach her.

Theo lowered until his forehead touched the ground. He wanted to give in to the pain of drowning, only Rory needed him.

Eyes closing, he allowed himself the moments he needed for his body to experience the rush of hormones and adrenaline, for his central nervous system to dysregulate, and his existence to fall deeply into his brain stem. He allowed himself to breathe through that loss of his higher mind until he felt the pain his instinct told him to flee from.

Theo didn't run from it. He stayed with it until he knew he could stand. Knew he could return to the lab and fight for his wife on his own terms.

"I'm coming," he promised.