Please note that the below is a draft.  All content © K.J.H Cardinalis.  This series in progress has no established title as of yet, but might be called “Crossfire,” “The Experience,” or “Mayflies.”

It was well past ten when she stumbled into the abandoned lobby.  The cacophony of choppers had passed like thunder into rain, leaving inky silence.  It was utterly dark; even the tall lamps in the corners had been extinguished.  Watching the counter above the lift ticking down from 6, she swallowed her disquiet.  This did nothing to alleviate it; it only crawled down into her stomach to sulk, a restless puddle of queasiness that festered like something rotten.  

Outside, orange balls of light quivered feebly, disjointed and abstract.  The tinting of the glass diffused their fiery blush into a red, murky gloom.  Ghostly apparitions fluttered in the deserted street, bits of trash from the earlier bedlam wandering like lost souls.  A lone car screeched by on the avenue, its taillights dissolving into the dark.  She watched it disappear, wishing she could too.

… And 1. 

The elevator Door slid open, bright incandescence spilling out into the lobby.  The cheerful chime of the bell was deafening. 

It seemed like the door to a gas chamber.  It beckoned patiently, its warm glow somehow all the more menacing for its utter banality and innocuousness.  It was waiting for her.  There was nothing to do and nowhere to run. 

So with a deep, tortured breath, she stepped inside.

The lift door slid closed behind her. 

2 … 3 … 4 … 5 …  The dread was ripening in her stomach, spoiling into full-on nausea. 

            The chime sounded again and the door slid aside, admitting her to a short, dark passageway.

The sixth floor.  It was ordinary enough—a windowless landing with half a dozen doors to either side.  The light from the lift shined on a polished oak set at the far end capped with an elegant brass plaque.  On it was engraved the defunct name, “Vjosa Agolli.” 

The old Albanian ambassador’s suite, now inhabited by … Something.

She pulled the gun from its holster, examining the barrel, biting her lip.  Someone had emptied the cartridge and taken her bullets. 

Well then.  Avalon hadn’t meant for her to assassinate him.  It seemed utterly irrational to think she would have—but she had left her the gun.  Anything seemed possible at this point, and she’d clearly gone to some trouble.  She must have done it for a reason, but this clearly wasn’t it.

            Breathing deeply, she returned the pistol to its place at her hip.  The lift door slid silently closed at her back, eclipsing the light.  Only the cold green glow of the 6 above the door penetrated the smothering, insistent dark.

            At the doors to the suite, she hesitated, examining the shadowy grain and the dimly reflecting brass doorknobs. 

This day … felt like a million hours.  When she closed her eyes, it was to the vacant eyes of the impaled man, to the screaming aide in the boardroom, to Avalon’s saccharine smile.  All she wanted was to go home and curl in a ball and sleep forever. 

The right-hand door swung open.  She jumped, biting down a scream.

            The eyes that peered into hers through the crack could almost have been Human, but for their unnatural yellowish warmth and the way the dim green light caught in them and reflected—like a cat’s eyes.  The face was a woman’s, fine-boned, delicate, again almost human.  But the chalk white skin, the colourless lips, and the pattern of marks running up the sides of the neck, behind and in front of the ears to the crown of the hairless head, left no doubts. 

            Self-consciously, she raised her hand to her own scalp, felt the marks her hair concealed.

            The reflective eyes flashed and turned aside into shadow, leaving the door ajar.

            Wordlessly, Chili followed her—him—it—in. 

            The suite was quite lovely and richly appointed, bathed in a cold blue-white wash of starlight.  A wide octagonal window took up most of the opposite wall, offering a breathtaking view of the city.  The night sky was a deep, almost startling blue, the constellations glittering overhead between luminous white clouds, the artificial stars of Point of Rocks reaching up from below.  The only other light in the room came from a fire burning low in a small stone grate opposite a sumptuous wood desk, and leaning against it was … 

            A being from another world.  

The firelight glinted in its jewel-like flesh, in the curve of its hips and bust, the perfect hourglass of its waist.  The mottled autumnal flesh of the arms, legs and torso dissolved directly into the whiteness of the hands and feet, the neck and head.  It was bizarre to see it up close, that seamless melding.  This fiery flesh wasn’t a garment like the ones that Avalon and the other Servants wore, but a substitute body, probably made of the same homogenous tissue through and through.  And the whiteness of the neck and face—she could see now the faint mottle there as well—smoother and bleached of the fall-leaf colours, shimmering softly.  It was the same material, the flesh that could be grown in any configuration—a facsimile of skin, but more perfect, more radiant than skin could ever be.

            Like Avalon, this enemy … was beautiful.  Painfully so.  Somehow, the pixels on her laptop screen and television set had never properly conveyed that.

            It held out its hand, extending a palm that shimmered like freshly fallen snow, parted pale, glistening, perfectly formed lips, and spoke.

“I’m Gary.”

That disconcerting male voice.  It wasn’t smooth, not like the curves of that bewitching female body.  There was an undercurrent of harshness to it that set her teeth on edge.

            Vaguely, dizzy, Chili felt herself nodding.  Her hand itched to touch that glimmering skin with hers, but she held her hand stiffly at her side, rejecting the handshake.  Get a grip.  This is not a god. 

            “Please, take a seat.”  Gary’s radiant hand gestured to a small leather-backed chair beside the desk.

            She didn’t speak until she was certain she’d swallowed the tremor in her voice.

“No thank you,” she responded curtly. 

       

Gary stared at her vacantly.  At his blank expression, she felt her simmering outrage heat back into a full boil again, breaking through her momentary lapse of self-possession. 

 “… About damn time!” she shouted. 

She expected another blank stare, but—

            “I’m sorry.  I have wanted to meet you, very much, but there has been much to see to since the landing.  I want you to know, before you distress, that what happened today was an accident.  I do not hold you accountable for your actions.  Neither does Darrel.  You were not in control of yourself.  You are being manipulated.”

            “Are they okay …?” she demanded.  “Darrel, and the man?”

            “Darrel is injured, but recovering; the man is fine.  It is important for you to know that you are not wanted by the authorities.  You can go home without fear.  If you prefer to remain here, that is fine as well.  You can sleep in the medical lab.  Excel will not mind.  If you wish to meet with Darrel directly to discuss the matter, he will schedule time to see you.  I do not suggest trying to meet with Lieutenant Stevens.  I do not think he will be so understanding.”

             “Without fear?”  Chili laughed incredulously.  “I walk and breathe fear.  I eat fear for breakfast and fear for lunch.  I’m changing into something horrifying.  There’s a goddamn implant in my brain.  At any minute, I could go berserk and shoot somebody.  It could be you.  I’m a fucking time bomb.”

            “You could surrender your firearm,” he suggested gently.

            “Would it make a difference?  I disarmed a trained security guard the other week and stole his gun.”

            “Let me ask you something.  When you found out what you’d done—that you’d shot both Darrel and Lieutenant Stevens … whom were you more concerned about?”

“The hell kind of question is that?  I shot two people.”

            “… Shot two people,” he repeated quietly.  “Do you think everyone would have seen it that way?”

            “… Everyone did.  Excel told me the crowd were furious at what happened to Darrel!  There was a riot.  And now …”  She broke off, flustered, jerking her arms feebly, sinking into her fury.  “… You’re staying.”

            Gary laughed.  So human, that laugh. 

“… But you see the distinction I’m trying to make, don’t you?”

She shrugged.  “I see it.  What of it?”

“Are you a xenophobe?”

            “… No.  I admit that I feel some … repulsion at your true form, but what else can you expect, given my circumstances?”  She swallowed, an epiphany growing as she stared into the other’s reflective, indecipherable eyes.  No headache.  Not this time …

“Until … now, whenever I encountered one of you, I got a headache from hell and an adrenaline overdose to match it.  It’s fine right now.  But if you changed … it’d come back, I think.  That’s it … It’s not every time I see a Guest.  It’s every time I see one of you as you truly are.” 

Gary stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and now, for the first time, expression graced his soft features, his refined, feminine brow knit in concern.

            “It doesn’t have to be that way … The fear.  And your chip, whatever it is—there is a good chance I can deactivate it.  I can set you free.”

            The firelight backlighting his body shimmered along his contours, igniting them into incandescent ruby.   Where the starlight touched his flesh, it glittered like ice.  Framed in that clashing brilliance of hot and cold, he was a black hole of terrifying magnetism. 

            It was obvious he was referring to the Experience.  This had the feeling of a bribe … was it a bribe?  

            She thought of the IUA officer and the way the fear had gone out of his eyes, and then of Dan Andersen.

Andersen had been an independent, willful, opinionated man.

            What was he now?

            Don’t step back.  Don’t let it know you’re afraid.

            But she couldn’t bring herself to step forward, to be bold.  So she stayed where she was, clenching up her insides.

            “No thank you,” she managed civilly, refusing this disgusting benevolence as she’d refused the chair.

            “… Fine.”  Gary’s polite tone was unaltered.  “Then you take a real risk.”

            “I’m made of risk.”

            He cocked his head, as if confused.  It … was a he, wasn’t it?  He spoke with a man’s voice, called himself by a man’s name.  But every curve of that exquisite female body belied that, almost heartbreakingly gorgeous in its perfection.

            How different she’d feel looking at its true form.

            “What is it?” it asked curiously, taking another step forward.

            “A stupid question,” she answered, her heart thudding in her neck. 

            “No question’s a stupid question.” 

            “… A couple of questions then.  Your name is truly Gary?”

            “No.  Of course not.  My name is unpronounceable in your tongue.  I had to choose something, didn’t I.”

            “Are you male or female?  Or neither, or another gender?  I wish to refer to you properly.  Everyone calls you ‘he,’ but your body …”  She grunted appreciatively, and hoped he’d missed it.

            “It’s complicated.  ‘He’ is more accurate, but ultimately incorrect.” 

He sat back on the edge of the desk, crossing one perfectly formed thigh over the other.  He wasn’t actually clothed, she acknowledged with shock—but there were no sex organs, male or female.  Which was odd, but then again … there wouldn’t be, would there?  What use would an arthropod have for sex organs on a substitute body worn solely to breathe human air and pacify squeamish human hosts?

            “Our species is a little bit different than yours … or a lot.  Females in our species are incredibly rare and incredibly precious.  Each has birthed a hundred thousand children—but they are far more than mothers to us all.  In a sense, they are our species.  They are the interface for our collective consciousness.  You’ve heard it said that there are as many neurons in the human brain as there are stars in the Milky Way?  Not remotely accurate—but think of this.  Each of our queens carries a universe within—thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of souls in hundreds of star systems … all dwelling in her psionic energy field, spread out across the far reaches of space.  The rest of our species are like the drones and workers in your bee colonies. Our bodies and minds are an extension of hers—conscious neurons, if you will.”

            “So you’re like a drone, or a worker.  You’re male?”  

            “I am and am not simply myself—I am in quite a literal sense a neuron in our queen’s extended brain, and also an individual.  We struggle somewhat with your species’ gender concepts, as we do with your concepts of self and other, which are so different from ours.  Our females are supreme.  Yet males in your society seem to hold the power.  I am neither male nor female myself, though our species does have males.  I’m more like a worker than a drone—but you wouldn’t call me a female.  My function is far closer to that of a male in my society.”

            She gawked at him, both amused and amazed by this explanation, and then started to laugh.  “You want humans to obey you, so you’ve blended male and female characteristics … because you’re not sure which to choose?”

            “… Yes.”

            “Where do you come off thinking men run our society?  There have been patriarchies on our planet, but not in hundreds of years.  This is 2025!  You might want to review your intel.”

            Gary’s coin-eyes blinked at her as if to say he didn’t believe her.

            “I’d tell you it’s off-putting,” she started, “except …”

            Except it’s not.  He is mesmerizing. 

            Now he was smiling, almost as if he read her thoughts, his teeth glinting between colourless lips.

“You are here seeking power,” she accused breathlessly, backing away toward the door.

            He laughed, still grinning, a disquieting sound that seemed saturated with the dark, scattering the remote light of the stars.  The smile varnished from his face, and he looked at her very seriously.

“We have no need to seek power.”

            She backed up further.  “… You are surprisingly forthcoming.”

            “What need have I for deception?”

           

She shook her head, disbelieving. 

            “Chili Crossfire.  Stop.”

            She paused in mid-step, her heel still raised.

“I asked for you … because I wanted to apologize to you personally for what has been done to you.”

Now this …?  Right after he all but admitted his desire to manipulate her entire species?

            “You have got to be kidding me!” 

            “You do understand I have nothing whatsoever to do with that chip in your head?”

            “… How am I supposed to believe anything you say to me?”

“I’ve offered to help you recover your memories.  That you have rejected my offer is nothing; I’m not here to trap you.  You will have to rely on David Excel in my stead, but you have my word that he will do everything he can.”

            “What about this?” she shouted, gesturing at her mutilations.  “You made me into a freak.”

            “I didn’t do that to you either.”

            “Your bitch of a—”

            “—Terry Avalon is a predator,” Garyrejoined swiftly, the harsh edge in his voice escalating.  “She is everything that is wrong with your species.”

            “What exactly is her job description?” 

            “… Administrator.  Her job is to oversee the embassy—and ensure that our mission here on earth runs smoothly.  To that end, I have given her the freedom to act as she chooses.”

            “What did she do before?”

            “She worked for the government.  There, as I understand it, she didn’t have a job description.  She was … an enforcer.  Prior to that …”  He shrugged.  “Who is to say.  She has a talent for destroying lives.  I have no idea why she’s fixated on you … But I genuinely pity you.”

            “If she’s such a monster … I don’t understand.  If you have no respect for her …”

“I despise her.”

“Then why did you give her the job …?”

            The white disc of the moon peeked over the rim of the window.  The indifferent arctic light shimmered coldly in Gary’s eyes.

            “… Because she applied,” he responded lethargically, and shrugged.  

            Speechless, she swayed in place, fiddling with the handle of her impotent gun.  He hadn’t said, “… and she was an ideal candidate,” but she’d heard it all the same.  

            A chill crept up her spine, gooseflesh rising on her bare arms.  Dread hollowed the pit of her stomach.  Garyhad just admitted he’d selected Avalon in full knowledge of what she was, purposefully and deliberately.  To what end …?

            “Why are you here?” she whispered.

            The last embers crackled in the grate behind him, the blood-red glow melting into extinction.  When he replied, his voice was as soft as hers.

            “… To annihilate the human race.”

            The silence stretched long after he had spoken, uncoiling, extending, the shock of it paralyzing every muscle in her body.  At any moment, she was certain the beautiful apparition beside the fireplace would melt away, morphing into chitin and death.

            He was still watching her, his eyes deathly solemn.  

            “Why?  Why would you do that …?”

            “You of all people need to ask me that?  You, whose life has been destroyed by your own kind?  I have given Terry Avalon power undreamt of.  But I have directed her in nothing.  She has my permission and my blessing to do whatever she wants until the end of the world.  She could help the poor … house the homeless … cure disease.  Instead, she creates suffering and stamps out independence.  That is your human race.  What need is there for a trial and a jury of your peers?  Your peers are guilty.”

            “Does she know?”

            He laughed.  “Of course she knows.  What worse destructive power could I unleash on humanity than its own kind?  It is all too easy to find judges and executioners among you.”

            “Doesn’t she care?”

            He shrugged.  “How should I know?”

            “Why would you tell me this?”

            His answer, like all the rest, was almost fantastically simple.

“… Because you asked.”

            “I’m going to tell everyone.  I’ll stop you,” she cried, backing toward the door, reaching for the handle.

            Even as she said it, she knew exactly why it was futile.

            Dan Andersen had tried his damndest—and given in. 

            She thought of Denise, bright-eyed with wonder at an alien race.  For her, the Guests could do no wrong.  Every day, new ships were landing in cities all over the world.  More and more people were having the Experience.  Hundreds would soon become thousands, thousands tens of thousands—and how many more would even be needed to cement the Guests’ supremacy, to build complete trust and utter dependency? 

            They were welcomed here with open arms … and they’ve already done us so many favours. 

The World Government had averted disaster over a century ago—but the Guests had finally put an end to war, disease, and famine.  They’d corralled three of the Four Horsemen, and now they had only to corral the stragglers and tip the balance in their favor whenever it became necessary.  And for that, they had an easy answer.

            (We have no need to seek power …)

            She thought of Andersen’s lucid blue eyes, robbed of their liveliness, their passion, their integrity.  Eyes she would remember forever, emptied by a creature like that standing before her, the soul behind them extinguished like the fire in the grate.  And yet … she thought of Denise, whose eyes were still full, still lively, still hers.  She knew if she saw Andersen today, she’d see the same passion and vigor in his eyes as before.  There was no convenient marker, no sign left behind to tell anyone that this person was not the same.

The Experience … was power.  Her lone voice screaming in the wind, against that … what would that amount to?  Given a few months …

Only the deranged ravings of the world’s most unrepentant conspiracy theorist.

            “Andersen,” she blurted.  “You … changed his mind.”

            “Did I.”  His tone was unreadable.

            “Did you pity Andersen?” she asked, her voice shaking.  “Before you changed him?”

            “Did you actually ask Andersen why he wanted us gone?  Andersen was a xenophobe.  I didn’t change his mind.  I changedhis perspective.  There’s a big difference.  Your friend Denise Yun—”

            She sucked in her breath.  “Don’t say her name.”

            “You know she’s the same person.  So is Andersen.  The only change I made was to their prejudices.”

            “You can’t expect me to just … accept that you are here to destroy my world.  Why would you tell me that, and let me live—” 

            “Go ahead.  Tell them,” he urged softly.  “… Give it your best shot.  I’d almost be disappointed if you didn’t.  And Chili Crossfire—I do pity you.”

            “Why?”

            Gary remained utterly motionless, the moonlight at his back obscuring his face.  “Because you are a contradiction, a good human.”

~~~