An Unwanted Guest

Inside the capsule is a palm-sized, white object suspended in the air. It’s triangular, and looks a bit like a puzzle piece, with short, square knobs on each side. It has the same microchip-like engravings that the switch out front did.

“So, this is what the ruins were guarding.” Asa says. “It must contain important code.”

“Extremely dangerous code. Whatever’s on it was enough to wipe out a large portion of the population. We’ve protected the ruins for generations, and it’s for a reason.” Says Afra. “I only let you in because you seem to share a similar goal to us.”

She glances at him as she says this and the corners of her mouth subtly raise.

“Wait… You think the extinction of the ancient societies was caused by this?”

“I know so. I’m a direct descendant of one of those ancient societies, the Almadesa.”

“I didn’t know there were any left!”

“We keep to ourselves and only interact with the settlers from Earth as much as we need to get what we need to survive.”

“Why do you keep to yourselves? Your people’s technology is such a big mystery to us and you could’ve been telling us about it this whole time.” He doesn’t mean to be insulting, but he can’t help but pout a little.

She smiles, amused. “This technology is thousands of years old. Unfortunately, most of that info is lost to time, even for us, and we’re so secretive because of this.” She points up at the white object and her tone turns serious, voice seemingly teeming with the power of the many priestesses who came before.

“Many, many generations ago. This wiped out nearly all of mankind. Just as you couldn’t tell me your reason for being here, I cannot tell you what the purpose of this object is. Both that knowledge would put our world in a peril beyond anything you’re capable of imagining, should it end up in the wrong hands, and it would be much, much worse if this object were to do so as well.” She says. “We call this object the Key.”

She pauses and looks back at Asa, now her normal self again but her voice still carries a grave weight. “We keep the Key and all knowledge of the Key hidden from outsiders, the ones from Earth in particular.”

“It’s not because you’re worse than us. It’s because you weren’t here to witness the destruction it caused, and you would be in the perfect position to make the same mistakes we did.”

Asa shakes his head reassuringly. “No, I understand. There’s a lot of us and we make some pretty awful decisions, more often than we’d like to admit. That’s just how people are.” His expression then turns serious. “That’s actually why I’m here.”

“Afra, what you’re doing is important. So important. You and your ancestors might be the only reason we earthlings are still here, but Soleeh’s no longer a secret. The ruins aren’t and I suspect that the Key isn’t either. Someone much worse is coming, and the villagers aren’t equipped to deal with it. I need to take the Key and bring it with me to Inizio, where it can be placed under military protection.”

Afra’s eyes widen and she clenches her fists, leaning forward into Asa’s face. “Under military protection is the last place we want it to be! That’s who caused the calamity the first time! I only let you in here because of your powers and you think I’m going to let you leave with it? Over my dead body!”

“I don’t like it either and if I had any control I would leave it here, but we don’t have that choice! If my military doesn’t take it, then another will, and while there’s a chance that Inizio may not use it, I know for a fact that the other one will!”

The color drains from her face. “There’s already a nation that wants it for war?”

“The City of Litora.” He admits.

“That’s… where we get a lot of our resources from. They’re the closest kingdom. They want to use it?”

He nods solemnly. Suddenly, that same cool tendril that snaked up his leg earlier moves up his back, like a ghostly hand crawling across his spine. A shiver shoots through his body. He sits there frozen, struggling to suppress his trembling as the alien sensation continues up his neck.

Afra’s eyes shoot down. “What is that?!”

Something presses to his throat. It stings. A strange, disembodied voice begins to speak. It’s a man’s voice. Cold and unfeeling, it drips with poison and a stomach churning sort of amusement – the type of voice that commands the attention of everyone in its vicinity for fear of what may happen if they ignore it. By listening to it, you can tell that it isn’t produced the normal, human way, with a tongue, vocal cords, and a windpipe. No. This was something else entirely.

“Priestess.” It rasps, sickly sweet. “Take the Key out of the capsule before I cut this boy’s head off.”

Afra gawks at the scene, wide eyed. A liquidy appendage slithers from the collar of Asa’s shirt, its tip having materialized into the blade of a curved dagger and poised to slit his throat.

“I…” Afra sputters.

“Go on.” It urges, with a condescending faux-friendliness reminiscent of a teacher guiding a young child.

Before she can think, her legs are already moving up the stairs to the capsule. Asa’s heart pounds out of control. He can’t move a single muscle out of fear for what will happen if the blade moves any deeper. His mind screams to help her in some way, any way, but he can’t. He’s never been so helpless in his life. He holds his breath.

She reaches the top and stares into the capsule. The Key floats inside. It looks completely unassuming. How could something so small have caused such a horrible situation?

Her trembling hands move closer to the glassy-looking forcefield. She’s about to pass through it, but hesitates. It’s my duty to keep the Key out of the hands of malicious parties, but I’m handing it over to a malicious party right now! Am I really going to betray my lineage… throw away my entire purpose without putting up a fight? If I go through with this, the blood of millions will be on my hands! However, if she does resist, there’s the alternative…

Grizzly images flash through her mind. Blood pouring as Asa’s tendons and windpipe are severed in the blink of an eye, the knife passing through the soft in-between of two vertebrae. Eyes rolling as his head lulls backwards, just barely hanging on by tearing skin and damaged spinal cord, and then a nauseating snap as they give way, finishing it all with a dull thud against cold stone.

When Afra comes back to reality, only seconds have passed and she’s still staring into the capsule. The Key stares back. Her hands are in the same spot, outreached in front of the forcefield. Moving them any closer feels like cutting off a limb and the inaction feels just as excruciating. Afra remains petrified.

She slowly turns her head around to her captor, silently pleading.

In response, the tendril presses the knife into Asa’s flesh, cutting him and earning a pained yelp. “GO.” The voice booms, not out of panic, but for the sadistic pleasure of yelling at someone who’s already scared.

Afra flinches violently. Without a second thought, she grabs the Key out of the capsule and dashes down the stairs. She offers it to their captor, wild eyed and out of breath. She’s already beginning to regret her decision, when it speaks once again.

“Now, you will walk across that pit and the kid will follow you.”

Afra does her best not to glare as she walks past him. She walks out onto the forcefield. Asa trails behind, keeping his composure rather well. The knife had initially taken him by surprise, but he managed to calm himself.

Crossing the pit the second time takes as long as it did the first, and Asa has plenty of time to think. A sentient, amorphous blob with a human voice… There’s only one thing that could be. An Animaguard, and it looks like it’s an animamorph.

Sometimes, an Animaguard and its user bond so deeply that the guard’s nanomachines become a part of the host’s body. After years of multiplication and assimilation with the cells of the host’s body, it becomes impossible to tell where the Animaguard ends and the user’s body starts.

This can provide benefits like rapid regeneration and resistance to illness, but the most infamous ability it can grant is shapeshifting. Someone who shapeshifts using an Animaguard is called an animamorph. They can occur naturally, but it’s rare enough to be a statistical anomaly.

It’s much more common for people to become animamorphs through human intervention like genetic manipulation and nanomachine therapy, as well as modifying the Animaguard itself. This process is controversial and of shaky legality. It’s usually done on career criminals in underground clinics, giving animamorphs a reputation for being assassins and spies.

An animamorph’s weakness would be whatever damages or disables nanomachines. Fire might work. I do have a lighter, but it’s in my bag. I wouldn’t be able to reach around and get it right now. I’ll have to look for an opening and then I’d also need something flammable, which I don’t have.

Maybe I could burn some of my clothes or my bag… then throw it at him? No, that’s too risky. He could just dodge it, and it’s unlikely it’d cause significant damage even if it did hit him. Electricity? I don’t remember there being any wires out in the open and I didn’t take any means of electrocution with me.

I don’t have any magnets or acid, and I really doubt I could make a virus on the fly even if I could reach Mimo. Afra probably doesn’t have much of anything on her and I can’t talk to her anyways. The last possible weakness I can think of is mental fatigue.

The user has to give the nanomachines orders. It takes a lot of discipline and doing it for long periods of time leads to exhaustion. Then they have to return to their base form. Wait, there’s cutting too!

If the body is split up into too many individual pieces, the nanomachines will struggle to regroup, leaving the user vulnerable. This guy’s also been utilizing complex transformations for a while without returning to his base form. Those eat up energy at an insane rate and there’s no strong light to recharge with in here. He’s probably pushing himself to the limit to make this strategy work and is planning to run as soon as we exit the ruins.

That’d be my opening!