A woman in the audience screamed, I could hear the last few splatter patterns dappling her face. Then I ducked. I’m not sure what I had just done, whatever it was though, it had manged to send blood flying from the man’s mouth and into the spectators’ area. The woman’s disgusted scream was almost completely drowned by the crowd’s uproarious cheering. This was what they had come to see.

I could hear the woman, whose dress I had just ruined, storm off. I could also hear the air parting as the man’s fist came plummeting down at my head. Drop. Roll. The sound of flesh against cement. His flesh, not mine.

Booing this time, no blood shed. Dodging was not a crowd pleaser. I flipped off my back and swung wildly once more. Wrong move. I could hear the crowd’s anticipatory collective gasp as they watched what I couldn’t see coming, but would feel in a moment.

A steel toe caught me in the abdomen. Intense warning pains flared as the moist membrane of my skin was torn. A deeper, more agonizing pain followed as the cartilaginous tissue of my endoskeleton bent and broke. My internal organs had been spared momentarily. Sliver red liquid stained the floor where I had fallen. I only caught a glimpse of it before I got up and smashed the man’s skull onto the same spot. From the sound it made, I knew the frontal bone had been crushed, the mandible had probably been forced up into the area of his orbital and nasal cavities. He was dead.

Limp. Stagger. Insane noise from the audience. Bets lost, bets won. There would be more deaths tonight. A moment of false glory, and then rough hands on my shoulders and a room that was probably a large broom closet in a past life. Slam, and the over powering scent of antiseptics.

Six months ago I was living in a penthouse, traveling to interviews in limousines, going out to dinner with actors and politicians. That was before the government learned our technology didn’t work on earth. Before citizens found out about the billions being divert into research funds. Before the tabloids had their way. Before America got tired of playing savior to an endangered alien race.

Now alien was said with same loathing someone might use when saying prostitute, ex-convict or illegal immigrant. They all meant the same thing, sub-human.

The masses of people parted as the men ahead of us shouldered their way through, each man tightly clasping the grip of their holstered gun. Luminescent Alien skin mottled the crowd occasionally. My hazy glance caught on a nearby figure. Its once distinctive blue markings were now distorted from silicone implants, and covered by scraps of tight fabric. I risked a glance down at my now dysfunctional arm, the lacing lines of scar tissue, the necrosis setting in around the finger tips. I was unsure whose situation was worse. I thought I saw what might have been a sympathetic twitch of fibers around her head, but the reconstructive surgery left her original anatomy too far gone for me to tell.

I felt the bump of bodies around me, muffled groans from those with greater injuries than I. As a group we had stopped moving, the men ahead of us had started to gesture frantically at an immense vehicle that was backing its way through the crowd. The back doors were thrown open before it had come to a full stop, and we were hustled inside.

Glint. Flash. My body reacted before I could stop it. I felt my head pivot to a one-hundred and sixty degree angle, my shallow optic receivers searching the crowd in high definition. Trained on any set of inhuman eyes. I caught them again, near the edge of the crowd. Wink. Laugh. She was gone. I had yet to turn back when something roughly baton shaped burst the fragile membrane on the back of my neck. Its momentum knocked me a few steps forwards and into the back of the van.


Cold laboratory light radiated through the thin skin flaps covering my optic nerves. I could feel the needle, the rhythmic push-pull of the thread. I couldn’t feel much anything else, I recognized the combined sensation of human and Eclinian anesthetics. The Eclinian type being from the dwindling supply of our old transport vessel.

With slow but sure methodical work, eventually the open wounds were closed. The cartilage reset. The internal bleeding clotted. With a hissing noise the hydraulic restraints around my limbs eased open and released me. With the return of movement came the return of pain. A mild but unrelenting ache from every frayed fiber of my support system. I sat up and felt my internal organs re-situating themselves in their now replenished extra-plasmic fluid. While the human medical treatments for my unease were immediate and effective, nothing would be a substitute my own organic self-repairs. Those however required solitude and time, neither of which I had at the moment.

I could see residual moisture evaporating from the surgical table. I glanced at my skin, it was glistening now with renewed mucus flow. The lubricating fluid would protect the billions of nerve receptors floating just under the membrane of my skin. Experimentally, I ran my hand along the table, feeling the near microscopic ridges and bumps in its texture. Next, I gingerly tittled my head, feeling the fluid slosh around my inner ear. I waited for the intense nausea and dizziness that often followed this experiment, but was pleasantly surprised to find my equilibrium in a relative state of balance.

“I saw her.” I attempted to vibrate my vocal sacs in a way that would recreate those human words. The old man’s face appeared on the edge of my limited vision with, what I could only assume, was a puzzled look. I made an experimental clicking noise, speaking the phrase again in Eclinian. His only response was to shake his head in mild despair. He put his hand out and I gingerly took it in my own semi-webbed fingers. I resisted flinching as the oils of his hand defused and permeated the membrane of my skin.

Too soon our thoughts were running together, colliding, fracturing on impact, reforming. I willed mine back to the safety of my central processor, letting the doctor get his feel for the composite-sensory communication. It took several long moments before we established real telepathy.

I slid my memories into his mind. Memories of the Eclinian/Ma’at civil war. Memories of our escape from a doomed planet. The highlights from war time politics. The feeling of paranoia that was rampant on the transport vessel, where every passenger came down with some psychosomatic illness.

I could tell the doctor’s receptors were overloading, but I kept pushing the thoughts. Now he could see her face, her Ma’at eyes glowing amongst the dead voids of the Eclinians. The translucent veils of skin that flowed from around her appendages sparkling with natural phosphorescence. The twitch of her clawed hand. Peace had been so close.

In the real world I could feel the spasms shaking the old man’s body, his now erratic heart beat thumping into the white noise of rushing blood. I forced one last blurry sequence, the Ma’at ship leaving port, destruction in its wake, and then her face in the crowd at the underground fight.

My hand snapped away as the doctor fell to the floor, his breathes coming in desperate gulps and gasps. This was hardly his first experience with composite-sensory communication. He had forced his was into my central processor many times before, wiling me to divulge. There had been little option but to do so, or else risk a physical dissection. However, as I surrendered my thoughts, he in turn surrendered his. In the same way he was fascinated with Eclinian social rituals and scientific advances, I found myself eager to understand his earthly experiences. I soon learned the feelings of despair he felt when his wife had died of cancer, and came to understand the psycho-social pressures that had lead his two sons to embrace the American drug culture.

As we shared information, we formed a mutual respect and trust of one another. Recently he had spared my name from the lists of available test subjects, in turn I provided him with as much useful information as I could. A human-to-human composite-sensory machine was near completion as a result of my cooperation, though I quail to consider the amounts of organic Eclinian materials needed to power such a machine.

Dr. Richmond staggered up off the floor, intrigue glittering in his ancient eyes. Arthritic hands clasped the edge of the table I still perched upon, a conspiratorial hunch to his shoulders.

“I do say... I’ve always been one for a good suspense novel. How do you plan on taking this bitch out?”

I shook my head in a gesture that I’d learnt meant negatory, but also confusion. He seemed to correctly comprehend my meaning. He paused in a thoughtful way, eyes casting about the ceiling. Squinting and mumbling a second more before he hobbled off to his work station. I slid off the table a moment latter, testing more thoroughly my balance, all seemed in working order.

“Here!” This exclamation was a jubilant statement of fact, rather than a command. I came to this conclusion not before I was half way across the room to his side.

“I think this will be of help to you.” He turned in my direction holding up what looked to be a small adhesive patch. “I am fortunate enough to be one of the few scientist with access to a Ma’at test subject.” His glance shifted the the corner of the room momentarily, a reaction I learned later was associated in humans with guilt. “Not too many ways to kill them... The test subject proved immune to most all toxins. Rapid regeneration healed small wounds before other adverse side effects exhibited themselves. It makes your subtle assassination options limited. I did learn something that may be of use though. My results showed a small percent of Ma’at are genetically predisposed to a hypersensitivity disorder of the immune system. It can bring on a condition not unlike a human anaphylactic shock reaction.” He waved the patch back and forth in his fingers. “This compound is what you could call the allergen.”Dr. Richmond pealed the protective paper back of the patch off and applied it to my shoulder. “No effect on Eclinians,” he said in way of explanation.

There was a pause as I tried to recall the proper human etiquette for the situation. My thoughts on the subject were soon interrupted by the distant vibration of footsteps. In an attempt to make the fastest form of human communication possible, I pointed to the door and then held a single finger to my mouth. As the steps grew closer I could only hope he understood. Sliding hastily onto the surgical table again, I attempted to feign unconsciousness. The moment my body grew still, the door to the laboratory opened.

“Hey Doc.” The sound of leather falling against stainless steel. Click-click as two latches popped open. “You’ve got a good eye, she did well last night.” The rustle of cotton fiber paper, unique to American currency, exchanging hands.

“Yeah, well its what happens when your fighter still has most of their organs intact.”

Nervous laughter.

“You ready to do the administration, Doc?”

Pause.

“Yes, of course.”

Diacetylmorphine, what most call heroin. Well know for its high rate of dependency, in humans and in Eclinians. Administered to my race as a perverse maintenance drug. Crime Bosses taking their leads from systems established in places like the United Kingdom, where diacetylmorphine is regularly administered to addicts in an attempt to stabilize their lives. Except here, its forcibly injected into subjects to cause dependency, then maintained to create effective indentured servitude from the victims. No one forced me to fight, to kill, to debase myself. There was no proverbial gun to the back of my head. Only the looming effects of withdrawal if I didn’t earn my next shot. While typically non-lethal in humans, withdrawal in Eclinians almost guaranteed death. I was not the first or the last of my race who had tried to walk away, only to come crawling back within the next week.

Even as I heard the needle being prepared I could feel the subtle onset of withdrawal. By the time Dr. Richmond had moved to my table, I knew I would have done anything he asked. In a swift, practiced, movement the needle stuck and the diacetylmorphine defused into my system. Mild euphoria blocked what remained of my pain, and soon, the rest of my sensory receptors.