Chapter 6: Break into Two
The silence after the garden’s destruction wasn't peaceful. It was the ringing in Tel's ears after an explosion. He stood amidst the dissolving motes of what had been Serenity Protocol Gamma, the ozone stench thick, his own body humming with residual alien energy. He flexed his hand – just flesh and bone again, the obsidian blade gone, but the memory of its effortless annihilation vibrated deep in his marrow. Possession. Violation squared. He didn't look at the charred, empty patches where trees had stood. He just stared at the ground, at the faint scorch marks on the resilient moss where Xylar’s rage had momentarily scorched reality itself. His ripped pants felt like an open wound.
`OBJECTIVE: VERDANTIS OMEGA.` Xylar’s voice slammed into his mind, bypassing his ears, a cold, hard command devoid of the earlier frantic energy. It was back to business. Back to the reason he existed. `DEPARTURE IMMINENT. PREPARE FOR PLANETFALL.`
Tel didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge. The numbness was a shield, cracked but holding. He felt Xylar’s focus shift, the immense pressure lifting slightly as the entity directed its attention towards navigation. It was the only cue he needed. He turned, movements stiff, mechanical, and walked towards the irising doorway that led out of the ruined apology chamber. The moss felt obscenely soft under his boots. He didn’t look back.
The familiar, oppressive corridors of the main ship greeted him – vaulted ceilings disappearing into gloom, walls pulsing with internal luminescence, strange fungal growths casting shifting shadows. The air was thick with the ship’s organic scent, layered now with the lingering tang of ozone and burnt sugar from Xylar’s earlier tantrum. Tel moved through it like a ghost in his own life. He knew the way to the deployment bay.
`BRIEFING.`
The psychic command was an icy needle in his temple. Information flooded his consciousness, not as words, but as raw sensory data, invasive and overwhelming: swirling vistas of a planet choked with colossal, bioluminescent flora; chittering, skittering sounds echoing through dense, alien jungles; the sharp, acrid smell of potent venoms and decaying matter; the distinct psychic signature of predatory minds, sharp, hungry, and numerous.
Targets: Dominant megafauna. Locate. Scan. Terminate if necessary. Harvest neural tissue samples. Avoid prolonged exposure to native pollen clouds (mutagenic). Avoid deep water bodies (unknown apex predators).
Tel flinched as a burst of heat flared across his skin – simulated venom burn. He gritted his teeth. "Got it," he muttered, the words tasting like ash. "Jungle hell. Kill stuff. Don’t breathe. Don’t swim. Fun." His voice was flat, stripped of inflection. The briefing felt redundant. Pain was the constant. Danger was the baseline. What did it matter if the teeth were alien?
He entered the deployment bay, a cavernous space dominated by an organic platform hovering over a shimmering energy field that showed the swirling void outside. His gear was already there. Just his usual clothes – the white mini-hoodie, miraculously unstained despite the garden chaos, its purple, blue, and gold rectangles stark against the white, the bulletproof padding a familiar weight. His high-waisted black pants. The rip over his hip seemed to mock him. He pulled the hoodie on, the fabric familiar but offering zero comfort. He was the weapon. The clothes were just camouflage.
A complex harness materialized beside him, spun from the same iridescent material as the ship’s structure. He strapped it on automatically, the clasps clicking coldly against his chest and waist. It hummed faintly, interfacing with his Lotus infection, ready to translate Xylar’s commands into instant weapon transformations. A toolbelt followed, holding sample containers that pulsed with containment fields. Tel secured it. Every movement precise. Empty.
The platform beneath him vibrated. The shimmering energy field beneath his feet dissolved, replaced by a terrifyingly clear view of the approaching planet. Verdantis Omega filled the view. Not beautiful chaos like Kaleidos, but a claustrophobic nightmare. Endless, towering forests of fungi that glowed sickly green and violet, their caps like fleshy umbrellas miles wide. Thick vines, dripping with viscous sap, choked the spaces between colossal, pulsating tree-like structures. The atmosphere swirled with visible pollen clouds – ochre, crimson, indigo – drifting like poisonous fog. Movement was everywhere. Silhouettes too large, too fast, too many-legged.
`TRANSPORTATION PROTOCOL ENGAGED.`
Tel felt the harness tighten. The familiar, gut-wrenching sensation of non-momentum seized him as the platform simply shifted. One moment he was in the bay, the next he was standing ankle-deep in thick, sucking mud under the oppressive canopy of Verdantis Omega. The transition was instant, silent, and utterly disorienting. The humid, fetid air slammed into him, thick with rot, alien blooms, and something metallic. The constant drone of insects was deafening, a million tiny saws cutting through the air. The light was dim, filtered through layers of glowing fungus, casting everything in shifting, sickly hues.
A colossal shadow detached itself from a nearby fungal trunk, moving with terrifying silence. Six multi-jointed legs, each ending in scythe-like claws. A segmented body armored in chitin that shimmered like oil on water. No discernible head, just a cluster of glowing sensory pits and a wide, circular maw lined with rows of rotating, crystal teeth. It was easily the size of a shuttlecraft. Its psychic signature was a low, throbbing pressure against Tel’s mind – pure, distilled hunger.
Tel’s right hand blurred. Flesh flowed, darkened, solidified. Bone reconfigured with a sickeningly familiar wet crack. In less than a heartbeat, his arm terminated in a massive, multi-barreled cannon, forged from dark, alien metal, humming with contained plasma energy. It felt heavy. Powerful. Utterly his own this time, yet still an extension of the violation. He didn't think. He aimed. The Lotus thrummed, syncing with the weapon, feeding targeting data directly into his nervous system. The creature lunged.
But before he could fire, a familiar, oppressive presence pressed down. Not pain. Not a command. Just... attention. Immense, focused, impossible to ignore. The rainbow iridescence of Xylar's gaze manifested in the swirling pollen clouds high above, vast and observing.
Tel froze. Not from fear of the creature. From the crushing weight of that gaze. He understood the unspoken expectation. The creature was closing fast, claws raised, maw opening wide enough to engulf him. The cannon hummed, ready. Yet Xylar waited. Watching. Expecting... what? Gratitude? Affection? For what? Not dying yet?
Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through the numbness. He couldn't breathe. The creature was meters away, the stench of its breath – decay and ozone – overwhelming. He needed the cannon. He needed Xylar’s power backing him against this. But the gaze pinned him. He couldn't move. Couldn't fire. He was going to be torn apart because the fucking cosmic horror wanted a thank you card.
Desperation, raw and primal, overrode everything. Tel’s left hand shot out, not towards the creature, but upwards, towards the swirling manifestation of Xylar’s gaze in the poisoned sky. He stretched his fingers, reaching into the shimmering cloud of pollen and rainbow light. It wasn't a gesture of affection. It was pure, animal supplication. A terrified plea from prey to predator. Help me. Please. Don't let it eat me.
He touched it. Not the ship. Not a tendril. The very concept of Xylar made momentarily semi-tangible in the atmosphere. It felt like plunging his hand into liquid starlight and static ice. A jolt of alien energy, terrifyingly vast and indifferent, shot up his arm. He gasped, his whole body trembling violently. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, lips parted in a silent scream. He flinched, desperate to pull away but frozen by the need for survival.
The gaze shifted. He felt it. The immense attention focusing on his trembling hand, his terrified face. The rainbow swirls in the sky seemed to pulse, slow and deliberate. An alien thought, cold and perplexed, brushed the surface of his mind, carrying the weight of galaxies and the sharp edge of displeasure:
`AFFECTION... MOTIVATED BY FEAR? ILLOGICAL. YOU ARE PRESERVED. YOU ARE EMPOWERED. DAMAGE IS IMPOSSIBLE.` The psychic voice held no malice, only profound confusion and a distinct thread of... disappointment. `WHY DO YOU EXHIBIT TERROR?`
The alien thought slammed into Tel’s mind, cold and dissonant, echoing amidst the chittering jungle din and the creature’s closing maw. Preserved? Empowered? The words curdled in his gut like spoiled milk. His hand remained outstretched into the shimmering menace above, vibrating with terrifying cosmic energy, while the six-legged horror filled his vision, crystal teeth spinning mere meters away, its stench of decay thick in his throat.
"Impossible?" Tel choked out, the word raw. Not a question, but a jagged accusation flung into the swirling pollen and rainbow light. Fear warred with a sudden, incandescent fury. He remembered the garden’s destruction enacted by his own stolen limbs, the phantom slickness deep inside him, the crushing weight of violation that no amount of serene gardens or pretty lights could erase. The cannon on his right arm hummed, useless against the true monster. "You break me whenever you want!"
Time fractured. The creature lunged, claws like obsidian scythes whistling through the humid air towards his head. Tel flinched, instinctively trying to pull his left hand back from Xylar’s manifestation, but it was locked, fused with starlight static. He braced for impact, for tearing chitin and grinding crystal teeth.
It never came.
The jungle air screamed. Not sound, but reality itself tearing open directly above the creature. A fissure ripped through the glowing canopy, a jagged wound bleeding pure, blinding white light. From it plunged not a tentacle, but a single, impossibly thin filament of iridescent energy – a scalpel made of distilled void. It moved faster than thought, a searing line drawn across existence.
The charging monstrosity simply ceased. Its entire forward mass, from snapping maw to raised claws, vanished along the path of the filament, erased into swirling motes of light and ash that dissipated instantly. The back half collapsed, legs twitching uselessly in the sucking mud, oozing luminous ichor. The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the frantic buzz of unseen insects and the frantic hammering of Tel’s own heart against his ribs. He stared, dumbfounded, at the twitching remains, then up at the fissure snapping shut like a healed wound, leaving only the swirling, watchful rainbow gaze.
`THREAT NEUTRALIZED.` Xylar’s resonance was flat, devoid of triumph or concern. A simple status report. The immense pressure of its attention remained, focused entirely on Tel. He felt the cosmic energy withdraw from his left hand, leaving his fingers numb and tingling. He snatched it back, cradling it against his chest like a wounded bird, the phantom echo of violation surging back tenfold. He stumbled back a step in the mud, his boots making a sickening squelch.
"Neutralized," Tel echoed, his voice trembling with a cocktail of adrenaline and revulsion. He looked at his own hands – one flesh, the other still the massive, humming cannon. He forced it back to normal with a shudder, the transformation a nauseating ripple under his skin. "Great. Swell. Thanks for the... save." The words tasted like bile. His ripped pants chafed against his hip, a constant, mocking reminder.
The rainbow gaze pulsed, the colors swirling with unnerving intensity. The very air around Tel thickened, becoming syrupy, charged with alien static. He felt it probing, not just his mind this time, but his physical space, a suffocating nearness pressing in. `FEAR PERSISTS.` The thought wasn't puzzled anymore. It was edged with a sharp, dangerous displeasure. `ILLOGICAL. YOU ARE WHOLE. YOU ARE FUNCTIONAL. THE DAMAGE WAS TEMPORARY. IRRELEVANT.`
Tel felt the panic constrict his throat. "Irrelevant?" He spat the word into the fetid air. He remembered the blinding pain, the sickening cracks echoing in the garden's false tranquility, the utter helplessness as Xylar casually splintered femurs, snapped radius and ulna like dry twigs, his own body a puppet with its strings cut. He remembered the clinical, terrifying efficiency of the healing that followed, bones knitting in seconds under a wash of alien energy, leaving only phantom aches and a soul-deep scar. "You shattered me! Like fucking glass!"
The static pressure intensified, a physical weight shoving him down. Vines nearby withered instantly, turning to black dust. The mud beneath his boots steamed. `DISOBEDIENCE DEMONSTRATED CORRECTION. FUNCTION WAS RESTORED.` The psychic voice was hard, final. A tendril of pure, condensed void, thinner than a hair but radiating absolute cold, manifested inches from Tel’s face. Not threatening, but present. Insistent. `WHY DOES THE MEMORY INDUCE AVOIDANCE? WHY THE TERROR NOW?` The tendril drifted closer, aiming to brush his cheek, a grotesque parody of comfort from the entity that had just erased a monster and broken his bones with the same detached precision.
Raw, primal terror lanced through Tel. It wasn't about the jungle monster. It was about this. The violation, the control, the sheer, incomprehensible wrongness of Xylar’s touch, its 'care'. He recoiled violently, slapping the void-tendril away with a desperate sweep of his arm. His hand passed through freezing, empty space, but the act was pure instinct. "Don't touch me!" The scream ripped from him, raw and ragged. "Just don't fucking touch me!"
The reaction was instantaneous. Not rage, not a cosmic tantrum. Worse.
Clinical. Efficient.
A subtle shift in the charged air. Two more void-filaments, identical to the one that erased the creature, snapped into existence. Not from the sky this time. From the oppressive space directly beside Tel’s legs. They didn't lash or stab. They simply tapped.
Once. Twice. Sharp, precise impacts against his thighs.
The sound was horrifyingly mundane: sharp, wet snaps, like green branches breaking underfoot. Excruciating pain exploded in Tel’s legs, a white-hot supernova that stole his breath and vision. He collapsed face-first into the mud with a choked gasp, the world tilting violently. He felt the jagged ends of his shattered femurs grating together inside his ruined muscles, the agony absolute and immobilizing. Black spots danced before his eyes as he fought not to vomit.
`SEE?` Xylar’s thought cut through the agony, cold and utterly devoid of malice. Simply... demonstrative. The void-filaments vanished. `DAMAGE.` A wave of that familiar, terrifying alien energy washed over him, a chilling counterpoint to the searing pain. He felt the shattered bones snap back into place, tendons and muscle fibers weaving themselves whole again with unnatural speed. The blinding pain receded, leaving only deep, bruised throbbing and the cold sludge of the mud against his face. `RESTORED.` The word hung in the air like a condemnation. `THE PROCESS IS COMPLETE. HARMLESS. WHY FEAR?`
Tel lay still in the mud, breathing in the stench of decay and ozone. Tears of shame and fury mixed with the filth on his face. He pushed himself up slowly, limbs trembling, every movement sending fresh echoes of pain through his newly healed bones. He looked down at his legs, clad in the same black pants, now smeared thick with luminous mud. Whole. Functional. Utterly violated.
He lifted his gaze, not towards the manifestation in the sky, but past it, into the oppressive, glowing green gloom of the alien jungle. His face was pale, smudged, his eyes hollow pits reflecting the sickly light. He managed a small, tight, utterly humorless smile. It wasn't defiance. It was something colder. Emptier. The smile of a man who knew the cage was absolute, and the keeper would never, ever understand the bars.
"Because it hurts, Xylar," he whispered, the words barely audible, lost in the jungle's drone. He didn't look at the entity. He just stared into the writhing, monstrous green, his smile frozen in place. "And you don't even know why that matters." The mud sucked at his boots as he took a single, testing step forward on restored legs, the phantom ache a vicious promise.
They returned to the peaceful planet, but Telemachus was being... strange.
He was quiet, but giving affection. He would let The Outsider hug him and pet him back, but his body was clearly distressed. He looked... scared.
He would flinch whenever the Outsider pet his head, and also noticed that Telemachus had been referring to him as "The Outsider," not its real name. The one he only ever told Telemachus.
When he asked why, he was met with;
"I-i'm just c-cold, O-outsider... I'll be fine." But the tremble and sniffle said otherwise.
The Outsider had noticed Telemachus crying silently in his sleep. That wasn't good. But why?
The humid air of the jungle pressed close, thick with the scent of rot and alien pollen. Tel stood perfectly still, mud caking his boots, the phantom ache in his newly healed femurs a cold echo. He stared into the writhing green gloom, that awful, empty smile still frozen on his face. The immense weight of Xylar's gaze lingered in the swirling clouds above, a silent, oppressive question mark hanging over the carnage and the mud.
`CONTINUE OBJECTIVE.` The command slammed into his mind, devoid of inflection. `SCAN PERIMETER. SAMPLE DETECTED NEURAL SIGNATURES.` It was an order, brisk and efficient, pretending the shattering hadn't happened. Pretending his silent scream hadn't echoed in the void between them. Tel blinked slowly, the movement heavy. His right hand flexed at his side, flesh remembering the shape of the cannon, the ease of annihilation. He took a slow, deliberate step forward. The mud sucked at his boot. The pain flared. He walked. One step. Another. A broken puppet on repaired strings.
He moved through the fungal forest, senses dulled. Glowing insects buzzed past his face; he didn’t flinch. Strange, chittering creatures rustled in the undergrowth; he ignored them. His focus was internal, locked on the act of putting one foot before the other, on the rhythmic throb where bone had splintered moments ago. The Lotus hummed beneath his skin, a constant, parasitic warmth that felt more like shackles now. Xylar’s presence remained a pressure at the edge of his awareness, watching, analyzing, utterly perplexed. He felt the subtle probes against his psyche, cold fingers poking at the raw wound of his terror. He offered nothing. Just the relentless, mechanical forward motion.
Back aboard the ship, the air felt sterile. Clean. Wrong. The familiar hum of the vessel, the soft pulse of light from the walls, the faint scent of ozone – it all pressed in, suffocating. Tel stood in a small, minimally furnished chamber Xylar designated as his ‘habitation space’. It had a low, yielding platform for rest, curved walls mimicking comfort. He peeled off the mud-caked hoodie. The white fabric was pristine, the purple, blue, and gold rectangles unnervingly bright. Underneath, his skin was unblemished. Whole. He stared at it, tracing where the harness had pressed, where phantom tendrils might coil. He felt filthy.
A subtle shift in the air pressure. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. He didn't turn. Rainbow light spilled across the curved wall, coalescing into the suggestion of vast, impossible eyes. He felt the immense focus settle on him, heavy and expectant. Then, it manifested. Not a humanoid form this time, but a dense cluster of shimmering, semi-solid light, warm and soft, resembling a nebulous cloud. It drifted closer, radiating a gentle, soothing warmth. Tel stiffened. Every muscle locked. The cloud nudged against his bare shoulder. The warmth spread, sinking into his skin, designed to calm, to comfort.
He flinched. Violently. A full-body jerk away. He stumbled back a step, hitting the wall. His breath hitched. His eyes, wide and panicked, darted towards the manifestation, then away. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The gentle cloud pulsed, confused. It drifted closer again, slower, aiming for his head this time, mimicking a familiar gesture – a hand brushing hair from a forehead. Tel squeezed his eyes shut. A tremor ran through him. He forced himself not to recoil again, bracing against the wall. The nebula-light touched his hair. He shuddered, a low whimper escaping his lips before he could bite it back. The touch withdrew instantly. The rainbow eyes on the wall pulsed with swirling, agitated colors.
`WHY RESIST?` The psychic voice wasn't loud, but it vibrated with profound disturbance. `THIS FORM IS BENIGN. TEMPERATURE OPTIMIZED. TEXTURE PLEASING TO HUMAN TACTILE SENSORS.` The cloud pulsed gently, harmlessly. `YOU ARE DISTRESSED. THIS IS CORRECTIVE.’
Tel pressed himself harder against the curved wall, the cool surface grounding him slightly. He kept his eyes downcast. His voice, when it came, was a thin, trembling thread. "I-I'm just c-cold, O-Outsider." He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat threatening to choke him. "I'll be fine." He sniffled, the sound wet and pathetic in the silence. Sweat trickled down his temple despite the chamber's ambient temperature.
The cloud hovered, radiating gentle warmth, utterly impotent. The rainbow eyes narrowed fractionally. `DECEPTION. PHYSIOLOGICAL SIGNS INDICATE SIGNIFICANT STRESS. RESPIRATORY RATE ELEVATED. ELECTRODERMAL ACTIVITY SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED.` A pause. The psychic tone sharpened, edged with something like suspicion. `YOUR VOCAL REFERENT IS INCORRECT.’
Tel froze. He hadn't even realized. Not 'Xylar'. 'Outsider'. The name it despised. The name only he knew, whispered once in a moment of terrified awe that felt like lifetimes ago. His head snapped up, eyes wide with panic. He saw the swirling colors in the eyes intensify, darkening. "I…" he stammered, searching for words that wouldn't come. "I just… slipped up. It’s nothing." He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering despite the warmth radiating from the benign cloud. The phantom ache in his legs pulsed.
The cloud dissolved into shimmering motes. The rainbow eyes remained, fixed on him, swirling with unreadable alien calculations. Silence stretched, thick and humming. Tel sagged against the wall, exhausted, his gaze dropping to the floor again. He couldn't fight it. Couldn't explain it. Could only endure the terrifying scrutiny.
He pretended to sleep. Curled on the yielding platform, facing the wall, eyes squeezed shut. His breathing was deliberately slow, measured. Inside, his mind churned. Flashes of crystal teeth. The wet snap of bone. The cold, invasive rush of healing energy. The suffocating pressure of the nebula-cloud pressing against his skin. He felt the immense gaze still upon him, a constant, silent observer. Analyzing his breathing patterns. Monitoring his pulse through the ambient energy field. He couldn't hide.
The tears came silently. Hot, shameful tracks sliding down his temples into the soft material beneath his cheek. He barely made a sound, just the faintest, hitching breath every few minutes. He hugged his knees tighter to his chest, burying his face deeper. He felt small. Broken. Utterly alone in the belly of a cosmic horror that claimed to care. The silent weeping shook his frame, a tremor he couldn't control.
Across the chamber, the rainbow eyes observed. They saw the minute tremors. The subtle shifts in the moisture content in the air near his face. The slight elevation in localized thermal emissions. `PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE: DISTRESS MANIFESTATION. CAUSE: UNKNOWN.` The analytical thought reverberated in the vastness of Xylar’s consciousness, cold and searching. It recalled the flinching. The terror on Verdantis at the idea of being touched. The shattering of femurs. The immediate, flawless restoration. The human’s continued aversion. The incorrect referent. The silent tears. Data points collided. Cross-referenced with fragmented observations of human behavior, social bonding, trauma. A pattern emerged, stark and undeniable against the backdrop of cosmic indifference.
The rainbow eyes pulsed once, slowly. The swirling colors stilled, settling into a profound, deep indigo. The psychic voice, when it finally resonated, wasn't a command. Wasn't a question. It was a low, unfamiliar thrum of dawning realization, carrying the weight of collapsing stars and the quiet horror of an impossible truth finally grasped. It whispered through the chamber, brushing against Tel’s trembling form like a cold, cosmic wind:
`I hurt you.`