Breakdown

It was tracking me!

It had the same trick.

That recontextualized how I’d gotten here. This wasn’t a game of hide and seek. It was just plain old tag. Both of us knew the other’s position, even without looking. That was how it had attacked me in the first place!

Not just that, it was how it was still attacking me!

The Vorak barreled into me after missing its leap. It felt like being tackled by a gorilla compressed into an even meaner package.

I barely reacted in time to keep it from knocking the wind out of me. Even as I tried to lean away from the alien, it still bowled me over and I went sprawling across the snowy concrete.

I landed painfully with a cry. I hesitated, even now. But desperation won out, and I shouted “…Nai!”

The response was everything I’d feared it would be: automatic .

The Farnata gave a start upon noticing me. The other Enumius Vorak had held their focus. I was a surprise in battle.

A teal curtain of flame immediately swelled and threatened to crash down on me.

But Nai’s reflexive attack was also everything I could have hoped for: big .

Big enough to catch more than just me. I almost slipped on the snow as frantically scrambled on all fours to get clear. The flames didn’t touch me, but feeling the heat still left me in a cold sweat.

After I barely dove aside, the flames tore across the ground toward the wall Chief had burst through. The Vorak had to leap backwards to avoid being cooked.

I asked Daniel,

He wasn’t wrong.

I turned to look at Nai to see if they were still going to attack me, now that it was clear I had my own Vorak after me. The Farnata glared at me for a tense second, and glanced toward Chief.

Before I got to see the alien’s decision, the second Vorak unleashed another shockwave at Nai. And I was close enough to get caught in the blast.

But the otter in question was easily thirty feet away when it knocked both of us clean off our feet. I’d managed to protect myself from the worst tumbles so far, but this one cracked my forehead against the ground where I landed.

More blood started pouring over my face. It even dripped down behind my air mask and over my mouth. I wanted to spit it out, but I didn’t have the time.

One thing right after another! If I fell behind, even for a second, I could die. Even if I made perfect choices, I might still wind up dead.

Nai was the primary target. I got caught on the edge. It was the only reason I could get up afterward.

The Farnata didn’t hesitate to counterattack either. Even right at the center of the conical shockwave, Nai wasn’t ragdolled like me. They’d been caught unaware by the attack and just rolled with it. In one fluid motion, instead of bouncing off the snow-covered ground, they landed and simultaneously sent a spear of flame toward the attacker.

I couldn’t hear a thing, which probably saved my life. Because if the shockwave hadn’t rung my ears so badly, I might have missed Daniel telling me to < Move! >

He was right. Nai was preoccupied with their opponent. It had been lucky to run into them, luckier for Nai’s attack to inconvenience Chief.

Nai’s wave of fire had forced Chief back and given me another opportunity to gain some distance. And since Nai was preoccupied with their fight…

I was on my own until someone less occupied could help me.

I sensed Chief on the radar. It wasn’t following Nai. It was moving parallel to me again. Now that I was paying attention to it, it was unmistakable. It was reacting to even small adjustments I made to my course.

Why couldn’t it have fixated on Nai? The other Vorak had to be struggling against the Farnata. Chief could have teamed up with it, they both would have gotten barbecued by Nai, and I could have slipped away to not die.

But Chief was singularly focused on me. I should have known better. It hadn’t gone after Tasser and Nemuleki either.

Chief probably didn’t know this building complex any better than I did. So it was improvising its path depending on how it thought would be the best way to get to me. Through a whole building of solid rock and steel, it was tracking me.

When the ringing in my ears started to fade, I got mad.

I said angrily,

I said,

<…I think we’re fighting a losing battle as long as we run. Our best chance is to buy as much time as we can, pick a spot, and hope Tasser comes through. Do what you can to buy yourself some advantage. A pipe maybe, or a cable. Some kind of weapon.>

I reminded him.

he said,

There was a ladder going into what looked like an underground maintenance area. Metal piping was bolted to the walls along with dozens of gauges.

That actually tracked. Chief wasn’t just breaking through the structure indiscriminately. Honestly, now that I slowed to think about it for more than a few seconds, it needed to use a massive blast of the spikes to get through the bigger walls.

All the other times, it had basically just jumped through windows and let its armor protect it from the glass.

I agreed.

If I knew where it would attack from, maybe I could stun it with a flashbang and injure one of its legs.

Immediately, I realized what a bad idea this was. I might have been able to track Chief’s presence through the walls, but that was it. I was lost in less than twenty seconds trying to navigate through the mess of massive industrial machines and piping.

I didn’t have a way to navigate.

Chief drew closer, and I struggled to shift my radar’s shape. I wanted a wide cone if possible. Anything to give myself the extra range to better track and avoid Chief.

It knew I could sense it.

It was obvious from the way it moved. I took a right at a junction between two massive pumps (at least, I assumed they were pumps) and the Vorak followed. So I doubled back a step, and went straight instead, only for it to match me.

A few precious seconds, that was all I managed to buy. I sensed Chief hesitate with each change of course I made, a moment’s observation to see if I was committing to my new line of travel, or faking it.

There were regularly spaced grates in this section of the facility, water ran underneath them. I’d come around to the backside of the complex, the side that butted up to the sea. I could sense the Vorak above me, but seeing the water made me pause.

After all, it was an otter.

Had it snuck in via the water?

I reminded myself at the same time as Daniel.

I confessed,

I could sense Chief above me, it couldn’t be more than twenty feet away.

Daniel agreed.

I wondered.

We waited. Every second was tense. I could sense the Vorak above me going back and forth, almost like a dog trying to decide how to lie down.

I didn’t want to just bolt. Time worked for me. Every second it gave me was one to recover and catch my breath.

Almost thirty seconds later, Chief did finally elect to attack with the same wide barrage of spike growth as before. The crackle was the giveaway again, and it didn’t catch me by surprise this time.

Once the creation really got going, the spikes grew in feet per second, fast enough to impale me if I wasn’t careful. But it took a very brief delay for that to happen. In the first second, the spikes barely grew an inch, and they made a faint crackle. The crackle grew much louder once they sped up, but I had been ready.

I got clear of the crystal spikes when they lanced downward. They punched clean through the steel machinery like paper. The pumps that breached instantly started spraying water everywhere.

That could prove just as dangerous. If I got too wet in this weather, I’d slow down just from the cold.

I didn’t look back when I heard and sensed Chief crash down to the same level as me. I needed to find a way out. If there was a ladder, that was where I could try and give Chief an attack of my own.

The Vorak didn’t go straight for me, it’s own crystals had blocked the narrow quarters of the walkways enough that it had to go around the enormous steam pumps.

Another couple seconds for me.

That was the margin of life or death right now. Just a few seconds, one clash at a time.

Daniel said worriedly,

I ignored him.

Ignore it. I thought just to myself. He wouldn’t hold it against me. With his condition, Daniel might not even be able to help saying it. Ignore anything that assumes defeat is inevitable .

I found my way out at the far end of the room, one row of pumps over.

Another access ladder like the first, on what had to be the opposite end of the room. No dekes this time. I sprinted full tilt toward it. My only chance would be if I could get to the top quick enough to get it when it came up behind me.

Chief nearly impaled me for rushing. Instead of a cluster to tear through a wider area, a single long spike tore right through my path at an angle. It had started far enough away that I hadn’t heard the telegraphing sound.

Can’t slow down, have to make it to the ladder.

I ducked under the spike, careful to not touch it and sprinted toward the ladder. It wasn’t the same spot I’d entered, the snow on the rungs was undisturbed, but it was a similar access point.

For the fourth time today, I had been inches from being stuck like a pig.

We were properly on the backside of the complex now. Sea crashed onto jagged rocks only about a hundred feet away, and I realized we were actually under the massive concrete structure I’d seen on the way in.

I ran a few paces from the ladder, intentionally slowing a hair. I had to time this right…

My range for the flashbang wasn’t nearly as far as my radar. Not even a fifth of the distance. If I wanted to stun it, I needed Chief to get close.

As much as I felt it dart through my radar’s space, I ended up timing it by sound.

The otter was fast, faster than any other I’d seen. When it had first attacked our truck on the road, I hadn’t been prepared for just how quick it was, and I hadn’t been able to follow it.

Oddly, I needed to trust that speed now. I aimed carefully and created my flashbang. It was less than a centimeter off the ground, right where Chief’s face would be as it came up the ladder. The moment I heard Chief’s metal boot scrape on the steel rung, I let the pattern in my head become real. Absolutely zero delay.

It exploded in a blinding flash the same instant it was created.

The Vorak was caught in the face with a scorching flash. In a single instant it had pounced up the ladder. It would have been so easy to be a single step too late.

My aim was perfect; trusting its speed paid off.

Daring to try in the first place did not.

Chief did not slow down from the blast for even a fraction of a second. It flew up off the ladder in a fury.

The ground beneath it crackled, even before it touched down. The moment it landed it created a new spike under itself. Just like before, the spike underfoot launched Chief forward through the air.

It had gone from out of sight, at the bottom of the ladder, to hurtling toward me in barely two seconds. That had to be twenty yards, not even in a straight line!

But… how!? Why hadn’t it been stunned?

I had been expecting something different, and I couldn’t react quickly enough to correct. I tried in vain to move out of the way in time, but Chief only had to reach out with one arm to catch my hoodie and drag me violently to the ground.

The Vorak weighed so much, especially compared to its size. It dug a clawed hand into my shoulder and flipped itself over, landing its full weight on my chest.

I screamed at the pain in my shoulder, but Chief cut me off, pinning my head to the ground with its other hand. My air mask was pressed into my face, smearing the blood that had partially frozen to my skin.

Chief leaned in, its face just inches from mine. Those stupid tri-part eyes, sneering at me.

My flashbang really had been perfectly timed. The blast must have gone off directly in the otter’s face. Its fur was singed around its cheeks and mouth, but thick, partially reflective goggles on its eyes had shielded it from being stunned.

I hadn’t noticed it wearing them before now.

I remembered that Trapper hadn’t worn its pair at first either. It had created them after I stunned it once.

But Chief had been ready for my only trick from the start.

With the Vorak bearing down on me, my life was literally in its clutches. But for whatever alien reason, it didn’t immediately tear my throat out, or make a sword and stab me.

Maybe it wanted something from me. Maybe it was just trying to be cruel, lording over a beaten enemy.

Back when I’d first escaped the Vorak’s cell, when Daniel and I were both realizing just where we were and how impossible it would to escape, I’d been forced to think about what would happen when the Vorak caught up with me.

I’d managed to put the moment off time and time again, but here it was. Four whole days I’d managed to run. I’d made it that long by fighting tooth and nail every time they got close.

Daniel said,

He didn’t need to remind me.

I was never just going to roll over for them.

So when Chief pinned me, I kicked and screamed all the way down. Its face was the most accessible gap in its armor, and I wasn’t about to ignore the scorched skin and blackened fur.

I punched it in the nose, and the otter decided to wrangle my arms to the ground instead. It might have had alien strength, but it still only had two arms. I bashed my forehead into its chin, and I felt something crack.

The Vorak recoiled enough for me to get a foot up under it and try to kick it away from me. It didn’t contest and took a sharp step back, swatting at my ankle.

I wasn’t dead yet!

When I got halfway to my feet though, I fell right over again when I couldn’t separate my feet. A chunk of clear crystal had grown over them, sticking them together.

If it managed to shackle me to the ground, I was finished.

“” I hissed.

Chief probably could have just left me like that, killed me at its leisure. Flailing around, effectively trying to escape wearing manacles. But to its judgement I must have still rated as enough of a threat, because it lunged at me again.

In baseball, even in high school leagues, batters have to track baseballs moving as fast as 80 miles per hour. When the object in question is coming directly toward you, it’s easy to get the depth perception wrong when it’s going that fast. It takes practice. But once you’ve put in the practice, 80 miles per hour isn’t even close to impossible.

Chief was fast. But it was not moving 80 miles per hour. It leapt straight for me, and even from a kneeling position, my arm twitched at the muscle memory.

I wasn’t swinging a bat, just my arm. But it was the same basic motion. Not a punch, so much as a wild chop with a closed fist.

But it connected right with the Vorak’s snout, just off center.

It still barreled into me, knocking both of us over, but I felt another crack in its face.

Chief yowled, and I saw it spit blood. The crystal on my ankles dissolved, just like Trapper’s foam had after it had fallen.

Creating stuff that stuck around seemed to take some concentration.

I saw a split-second window to attack again, keep it off balance. So I kicked it in the side of its head for good measure, and ran again.

I’d gotten too cocky with the flashbang.

And wasn’t that a low bar? I hadn’t really expected to hurt it. Slowing the alien down had been the only real goal.

At first glance, it even seemed like it worked. As I ran again, the Vorak gave chase, but not as quickly.

No… that’s a mistake. I’d let it get close to me one time too many already. I might have scored a love tap, but this was no reason to do anything but run faster.

Something, a bone I was pretty sure, had broken in the Vorak’s jaw. But I didn’t think that was why the Vorak had slowed down. Rounding the next corner confirmed it.

As soon as I left its sight, it slowed further, taking a wide berth as it came around the corner.

Chief was being methodical now. Instead of barreling through walls and leaping at me with claws, it was running me down slowly. I’d caught it almost off guard with the flashbang, but apparently even that was enough to make the alien wary.

It was taking no chances with me.

There was no way to know how long help might take to arrive. I hated not knowing.

Confusion went through Daniel, and I felt him focusing on the radar.

he said,

He was right. It was still functioning, but I couldn’t feel Chief’s position as exactly.

I guessed,

Daniel didn’t seem to agree,

I couldn’t argue with that.

It should have been harder to move around the mess of concrete. If I were to imagine a similar setting on Earth, most of the fences would have been chain link, eight feet tall, and topped with barbed wire. And while there were some interwoven fences that were made out of brightly colored cords, none of them sported any kind of hazards.

Since none of them gave off any hair-raising hum or buzz, it seemed Casti weren’t relying on electric fences either.

The upshot was, it was easy to climb them, and from where they met the building’s side, climb further up to the roof.

Hauling myself up again reminded both of us about my hands.

Chief clawed its way on top of the building. I felt it rise to the same level of elevation. I frowned. This had been a bad idea, now that I could see where I’d put myself. There weren’t really any barriers to stop the Vorak from shooting at me, save for the odd metal chimney or vent. On the far end of the building there was a steel frame with a dish on top, but it wouldn’t be helpful to me.

I’d hemmed myself into a smaller area, with more open lines of sight.

From the spot where it climbed up, the alien pulled its gun again and fired. A bullet sparked off the roof a foot to the side of me. I’d burned its face decently. Maybe that was throwing off its aim.

I was already running toward the opposite edge, ready to try to drop down again. But when I got there, the drop was twice as far. There was another sublevel that had been carved into ground with a long ramp going down. It was exterior access to the lower level.

Chief’s gun let out a crack behind me again. Nothing hit the roof this time, but I heard the sound the bullet made as it tore past me. I gave a shiver when the sound rolled over my skin.

Even more motivation, if everything already wasn’t enough.

I ran parallel to the roof toward the spot where the ground was close enough to drop safely to.

Daniel said,

I protested.

What Daniel had said earlier… how could I have forgotten? He didn’t just talk for my benefit. The encouragement was for both of us. Because Daniel needed it every bit as much as I did.

No …no, no, no!

Daniel said, < I’m sorry. I can’t see another way.>

I began, but he was already gone.

He crumbled in my mind, like a sandcastle.

Gone .

My own words thundered in my mind, like I was trying to stir him back awake.

“” I shouted again. But he wasn’t asleep. He was just… gone. How could he just vanish like that? Even when he’d faded before, I could still feel him in my mind, dormant.

But this was different. He wasn’t dormant because there was nothing to be dormant anymore.

My gut wrenched and my mind went right back to my first day with the Vorak, back in their cell. I wanted to curl up and scream. Every fiber of my being had needed Daniel to be a figment of my imagination. I’d needed him to fake.

But I hadn’t been alone. Not once since being abducted. Not truly.

But I couldn’t stop. Not yet.

Because Daniel had asked me what I was going to do in this exact moment. He’d known beforehand. Maybe even from the beginning.

Sickening understanding went through me as I ran. I was so desperate to help Daniel, I hadn’t thought about what he might do to help me.

He’d been in the way. So he’d removed himself from consideration.

The horrible pit in my stomach doubled when I realized it even worked.

Things slid into focus easily. The static on the radar lifted.

It was like a sheet had been pulled off my own mind, one that I couldn’t have noticed until it was gone. The journal, the radar, even our clock. Every odd thing Daniel and I had found in my head became sharper.

Clarity, for the radar most of all.

I could tell where Chief was behind me on the roof, but now I could notice what I hadn’t before. The emanation coming off the Vorak was still present. But it wasn’t just an isolated light anymore. It felt like I could make out a complex and impossibly aberrant shape that was filled with glowing mixture of a dozen different colors of light that didn’t exist.

I could even see myself in the same way.

Filled with countless different lights, but of different colors. Unlike Chief, I could understand the ‘shape’ of myself though. Just like the Vorak, the geometry of my pattern was impossible. It didn’t have lines, points, curves, or sides. But it still had volume and definition. It could still be filled with the same kind of abstract lights.

I remembered how Daniel and I had talked about how, from the Castis’ perspective, I was the alien. And bone deep, I understood why.

My own mind sensed itself. It felt impossible to look at myself, but what I saw was familiar anyway.

From the moment when the otter had created a halberd out of thin air, I’d kept running into things that I didn’t have the words to properly express, but understood anyway. This one was to a greater degree though. Seeing my own mind in its totality seemed to simplify everything else, like all the other insanity wouldn’t be so hard to describe now.

Even as the marginally transcendental experience unfolded in my head, I still didn’t stop running. Because as much as I could see myself, I could still sense Chief too.

There was a bright line running from Chief to me, in addition to the emanations my radar picked up from it.

The line followed me no matter how I ran.

It was, I realized, Chief’s radar.

It explained how I’d survived its first attack even though it had been a surprise attack. I’d gotten lucky, but not quite in a vacuum.

The line didn’t change with distance, only direction. It couldn’t be sure how far away I was.

It was just like the beam mode I’d tried with my own radar, only even more focused and linear. Stalker had been too far away to detect, so I’d boosted my range by limiting the area I could actually cover. It wasn’t a true radar that gave position. Theirs only gave direction. In a manner of speaking, Chief didn’t have depth perception with its radar.

I could hang it with that, surely.

Daniel deserved at least that much.

I didn’t even need to make a new mirror from scratch. I could feel the part of my mind Daniel had been tied into when he’d made the first one. I might have pushed the first mirror into Nai’s mind somehow, but I hadn’t touched the tools Daniel had used to make it.

In the dream where he’d shown it to me, it had been a hand mirror, like the kind a barber would use. But in my own head, I could make it bigger. A bubble, to surround my mind in every direction.

The effect was immediate.

The line pointing from Chief to me, shivered for a second and then dissolved back toward the Vorak.

I stopped at the edge of the roof for a second and saw the Vorak do the same. It was an otter. It didn’t have human expressions.

But the look on its face was unmistakable shock.

I flipped it off and jumped off the roof.

I wasn’t safe yet. I had to keep running and keep out of sight. It couldn’t track me. I could win!

My second landing wasn’t any gentler than my first. I did my best to roll on the spot to absorb the shock, but it mostly just got my clothes snowy.

I was still mobile though.

Why did Daniel do that?

Even as I ran, the answer was obvious. I could sense Chief bounding toward the roof’s edge above me. Knowing that it didn’t know which way I’d run bolstered me to go a bit faster.

The mirror I’d made, was one way. It reflected my own… emanation back toward me, but it still let in those from outside. The new perspective I had on my mind was odd enough, adding the mirror bubble only made things stranger.

I couldn’t pay attention to my mind’s reflection. Not now.

The whole of my focus was on escaping the Vorak.

Daniel had pulled himself apart for this chance. I wouldn’t let anything distract me.

Chief could still track me though. I was leaving trails in the snow as long as I was outside. Why didn’t the Casti plow their sidewalks? Or maybe I was on a road for the complex. It was only a few inches of snow, but it was still enough to obscure everything underfoot and have my footprints give me away.

I needed to get inside. Even if Chief could plow through walls and attack using the spikes, there was no way it would keep up.

This place was under attack though. The first four exterior doors I found were all locked. I wasted precious seconds trying each one.

Chief sprang around the corner dozens of yards away. It was far enough away to actually be outside my radar’s range. Even the small change of it being unable to react to my own path had allowed me to almost double my lead.

I was getting tired though. If I didn’t stop soon, I might collapse.

There was only one place I could be sure to get back inside. The spot where the alien itself had made a bouquet of spikes the size of telephone poles tear through the wall.

That was a problem. I’d gotten lost when I’d gone underground. Actually, even discounting that, I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the actual layout.

That was why I lost in the end. If I’d been tracking my steps with a mental picture, like I had at the mining facility with Trapper, I could have evaded Chief for good.

But the Vorak wasn’t dumb enough to outfox on improv.

I rounded the next building’s corner and heard a violent explosion. Steel and concrete breaking somewhere behind me. I didn’t look back, trusting my radar to track my pursuer. I needed to keep my attention on the building, trying to find a familiar point to orient myself.

This part of the complex stuck out from the rest, a little peninsula of a structure. I came around the other side of the peninsula and another shriek of stone and metal split out.

Chief burst through the hole it had carved through the building, cutting my path off. It had torn through the building just outside my radar’s range.

My blood went cold as I realized what happened. I wasn’t the only one who could exploit avoiding the radar. It’s radar must have had a longer range than mine.

It had figured out how far mine reached somehow, and trapped me.

I was standing in open space, with plenty of room, but nowhere to run. If I tried to run away from the complex, the alien could take its time and just shoot me. So I had to go through it if I wanted to get back to the safety of indoors.

And it knew that.

My jaw clenched. It had even torn open a new hole in the building for me to enter through. But it might as well have been miles away.

Double back, I thought. Going back to the first hole Chief must have punched to cut through the building could give me the opportunity I needed.

But…the Vorak would know what I was up to the moment I disappeared.

So should I double-double back?

Overthinking it didn’t help. Whatever I did, I needed to run away from Chief. So I turned back and ran to retrace my steps. The instant I was out of sight, I ran right back into my conundrum.

The worst part was how far away Chief was! I couldn’t sense it. This whole time, my goal had been to put some distance between me and the alien. Now, that was the very thing hamstringing my options.

It was fifty-fifty. Worst case? I got close enough to sense that Chief was blocking my choice, and I could reverse course again, duck out of sight and flip the coin again.

I should have known better by now.

Chief had one more surprise for me.

As I ran closer to the first hole that Chief had made, I didn’t sense it inside the building. As I began to step through the hole, I realized I couldn’t sense Chief anywhere—even on the other side of the building where the other breach was.

Where was it?

The tear in the building actually lined up with a hall that crossed to the opposite exterior wall. Both of the holes in the building were visible from each other.

And still my Vorak pursuer had vanished.

Even now that I was paying more attention to the layout of the structure, I didn’t think about where I chose to go.

A hall connected Chief’s two breaches. But there was only a single way further into the complex from that hall.

The moment I rounded the corner, a Vorak limb drove into my gut. For a split second, before I could notice the blow, it had suddenly appeared, just inches away, on my radar. There wasn’t even time to wonder why I hadn’t sensed it.

I doubled over in time to see Chief tackle me with its whole body into the wall behind me. I didn’t even have a chance to try and suck down another breath before it threw me outside again.

I pushed myself halfway back up before Chief grabbed my arm, swung me round and pinned me against the side of the building. It squeezed a claw around my wrist so tight, it felt like it was trying to rip off the hand that had struck it.

The otter’s hand clenched on my throat. My chest seized as I tried to cough, but there was nowhere for the air to go.

I didn’t give up.

Even as the Vorak was an inch away from me, I didn’t stop struggling for even a second. It’s face was vulnerable! I could get away that—

I tried to repeat my earlier blow, but Chief’s head flashed forward and bashed into my face. Something cracked in my face and tears instantly welled up. My nose was bleeding badly behind my air mask. I clawed desperately at it with my free hand. I’d drown if I couldn’t get it off.

The Vorak was two inches shorter than me, and it still could hold me up off the ground. Blood, sweat, and tears dripped down my face, getting all over the fur on its hand.

I tried to spit blood at its goggles, maybe force it to take them off and be vulnerable to another flashbang. If I could even muster up the energy to make one.

The blood didn’t even cling to the surface of them, like it was magically repelled.

I gave a sad cough, more blood spilling over my face. There had to be something else. Something more! A way out.

But when I tried to find a new idea, nothing came. Everything that I’d done, Daniel’s sacrifice, what had it all amounted to?

My enemy wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t pressured. It had singed fur and maybe it was missing a tooth. Chief was breathing heavily, nothing more.

Sometimes, you’re just outclassed.