Chapter 8: Looking Forward

 

I don’t know if it was because of the pupating, the big fight, or just it being late in the afternoon, but I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up for at least a couple of hours.

“Oh my god, you guys, I had this crazy dream, I — Oh, I don’t have a tongue,” I said, stretching. “That wasn’t a dream. Moms, are you here?”

"We’re right here,” said Amanda. 

I sat up with no small degree of awkward thrashing, leaning over the back of the couch. Amanda was indeed there, in the dining room (I call it a dining room, but it’s more like a dining table in the living room; we had a slightly more open-style house). Miri and Quinn were there as well, Miri on her phone while Quinn was playing around with a Rubik’s Cube that he’d stolen from my room and didn’t have the slightest clue how to solve.

“Oh, well, that’s nice,” I mumbled. “So what have you been doing? How are things?”

Amanda smirked, saying, “Your mother and I have been planning our next step. Miri, Quinn?”

“I’ve been texting my mom, trying to reassure her that the “government agents” that had a laser gun battle in my backyard aren’t going to cause any more trouble,” said Miri.

“Laser gun?” asked Stephanie, raising one eyebrow. “What laser gun?”

Amanda leaned over. “I think she means our blasters.”

“Oh, right, ‘Laser’. What a way to call them,” said Stephanie with the slightest roll of her eyes.

I leapt over the back of the couch, nearly falling flat on my face because, in case you haven’t guessed, it’s rather difficult to get used to having two extra arms and digitigrade feet. “Alright. I’m well rested, we’re all out of mortal danger — We are out of mortal danger, right?”

“Barring anything astronomically unlikely, yes,” said Stephanie.

“That’s good enough for me,” I said, looking down. “I guess I have a couple of questions. Hopefully these ones won’t take eighteen years to get answered.”

“We wanted to protect you,” Amanda interjected. “It was stupid and short-sighted of us, but we wanted to protect you. The only flaw in the plan was that you were growing up.”

She was being sincere; the wetness in her eyes was clear enough. Stephanie didn’t say anything, but I could tell that she was sorry for the same reason. 

I shuffled over to the dinner table, feeling sore in basically all of my joints. Slumping down onto an empty chair, I said, “I might accept that apology, we’ll see. So… why’d I turn into this?”

My parents both gave me an odd look. “Because you’re an Emissary?” Stephanie said.

“But I was always an Emissary, right? I didn’t just get turned into one by a ray or whatever. If I was always an Emissary, why did I look so human before?”

Amanda shrugged. “It’s a quirk of Emissary biology. In between the larval and adult stages, they metamorphosize into an instar mimicking whichever species is raising them. The instruction manual says it’s mostly cosmetic, though.”

I let the information sink in. “Is that why you never let me have a CAT scan when I broke my leg? Asshole.”

“Look, it was either that or risk you getting sent to the ER because you had an insect skeleton,” said Stephanie. “And you healed really well, which is good.”

“Whatever…”

I slumped down, my head in my arms. The information started to really sink in, that I had always been like this, always been a weird insect thing. It just so happened that I had disguised myself as a human for most of it.

“So… both of you and Alex are… from space?” asked Miri.

“If you want to be vague, yeah,” said Stephanie. “I’m Halitanian, and my wife is from Meligala IV. Alex is… well, kiddo, your egg was laid on Rrukatrin, and hatched on board the CSC Valiant Heart, but you haven’t left Earth since you were thirty months old, so you’re only from space on a technicality.”

“I was born on a spaceship?”

Both of my parents nodded. Amanda looked downright wistful. “It was a moment of hope amidst all the darkness and horror. Seeing you crawl, healthy and safe, out of that eggshell was the most beautiful moment of my life.”

“That is the sappiest thing I have ever heard,” muttered Quinn, who I had almost forgotten was in the room altogether. “Then again, I know people who breed spiders, so I guess I should know better.”

“Oh shut up!” I said, slapping him on the shoulder. “I’m way cooler than a spider.”

Quinn made a “so-so” gesture, then went back to the Rubik’s Cube.

“I’m going to be honest,” said Miri, holding back a laugh, “I kind of want to see baby pictures now.”

“We did keep the photos,” Stephanie said, giving Amanda a knowing look.

Part of me wanted to object, possibly angrily. After all, there is nothing more damaging to the self-esteem of a teenager than their parents pulling out the baby photos. The other part of me was just as intensely curious as Miri was, if not more so. I said nothing while Amanda got up from the table and ran to the bedroom. 

A minute later she returned with a pile of paper and a slim book with a blank gray cover. With the slightest hint of pride on her face, she pulled one of the papers out of the pile and slid it to the center of the table. 

It was, indeed, a photo of my mother holding me as a baby. She looked a lot younger, obviously, but more tired, more sad. She looked less like the Amanda who’d raised me, and more like the Amanda I’d seen over the last couple of days. Her hair was different, cut short, and that combined with the flat gunmetal grey uniform told me that she was military. In her arms was… a thing. It sort of looked like a grub or a caterpillar, long and white and fat, with six spindly limbs on the front half and a pudgy eight-eyed face on the end. Basically, think an unusually ugly caterpillar, except the size of a human baby.

“Wow,” said Quinn, leaning over my shoulder. “Alex, I don’t know how to say this, but you are not going to win any beautiful baby awards.”

“I — I don’t know what else I expected,” I said. “What’s with the book?”

“This is the instruction manual we’ve been mentioning,” said Amanda, taking the book and holding it out to me. 

I took the book. “The instruction manual to… my body?”

Amanda nodded. “There were many orphans after… everything. A group of Emissary doctors and biologists got together to release a guide for parents of other species raising Emissary children. I thought you might want to have it for yourself, now.”

I flipped through the book, not really paying attention to any of the words. “I see. Does this book, like, explain why I’m a girl bug?”

My parents stared at me blankly. “What?” Stephanie asked, seeming a little unsure of what she had heard.

“While we were at my house, I noticed that Alex has certain…” Miri took a breath and tried again. “There are certain anatomical features on the end of his abdomen that are, as far as I know, only found in female insects? Because they’re designed for laying eggs.”

Awkward silence fell over the dinner table, interrupted only by the slight click of Quinn messing with the cube. Even hearing it for the second time was a bit of a shock. I had mostly forgotten about the whole “being a female insect” thing while I was fighting the spectrademons and messing around with my wings. And the fact that we knew specifically because I had an egg-laying organ still felt odd, to say the least. Not painful, not correct, just odd.

“Well, Emissaries do have a more flexible notion of ‘sex’ than do most other species,” Amanda said. “There might have been some kind of… thing going on while you were metamorphosizing.”

I quirked my antennae towards Amanda. “What do you mean by ‘flexible’?”

“She means they can switch between male and female at will,” said Stephanie, not looking up from the photograph in her hand. “It’s called the falthrranta, and it was a major part of their culture.”

“Oh. So maybe something happened, there was a misfired signal or something, and that happened on accident while I was in the cocoon?”

Miri looked down, her eyebrows scrunching together in increasing confusion. 

“That’s as good an explanation as any,” said Amanda.

“Wait… if I can do this at will, then I can just farzanta back to normal, right?”

“I think I saw some instructions in the book,” Amanda admitted. “You can try it out later today. Just as a warning, the process usually takes a few weeks.”

“It’s better than being stuck like this forever,” I said. I looked around at Miri and my two mothers. “No offense. Anyway, it’s a relief.”

For some reason I wasn’t relieved at all. If anything, the idea of changing back filled me with a sense of subconscious unease. I went quiet, trying to figure out where that was coming from. 

Then Stephanie said something, seemingly out of nowhere. “I wish I was there for it.” She looked up, seeing my quirked antennae, and added, “Your hatching, that is.”

My antennae twitched away from her. “You weren’t there when I was born?”

“Of course I wasn’t,” she said with a smirk. “You were born on a warship; only your mother was there. I was a dozen parsecs away, panicking because of the birth of my adopted child that my wife and I had been talking about on the Q-comm.”

Miri finally put her hands down, and by put her hands down I mean she put her hands up in a gesture usually reserved for surrender, slamming her elbows on the table. “Hold on. You people have warships and colonies and wars and countries and stuff, all out there. How is it that we Earthlings haven’t heard about any of it?”

“It’s because Earth is in the Forbidden Zone,” said Stephanie. “Not because of laws or anything, thankfully, because if it was just laws you’d be swarming with offworlders by now. There’s a sort of… darling, what is it again?”

“It’s a radiation that permeates the whole region, interfering with our engines,” said Amanda, almost sounding bored. “Even with Steph’s expert piloting, it was the best we could do to crash-land.”

“So…” I paused, gears turning rapidly in my head. “…you came out here to a place where you couldn’t be followed. Because you wanted to protect me from the Order?”

Amanda nodded. “And so we could live out a peaceful retirement, but you’re right.”

“But then… the Order arrived. It’s not safe here anymore.”

Amanda sucked in a breath, like I’d reminded her of a bad memory. I suppose in a way I had. “And that is why, son, you are going to have to leave Earth. I have relatives in the territory of the Collective, and that is the only place where I can trust that you will be protected from the Order. Your mother and I have talked about this for hours and hours and… I’m sorry. There’s no other choice.”

I immediately looked over at Miri and Quinn. They looked... sad? There wasn’t any protest or complaint coming from either of them. 

“The Collective is where you’re from?” I asked.

“It is my homeland,” said Amanda, “but not Steph’s. They have stood against the Order for decades; there is nowhere in the galaxy that you will be safer.”

I slipped a bit lower in my chair. “I guess once I transformed, I wasn’t going to be able to stay here... How are we going to leave, though? You said your ship crashed when we arrived.”

“Well, clearly the Order have some way to get here without crashing,” said Stephanie. “And now that we took care of them all, we can take their ship and high-tail it back home.”

Quinn slammed the Rubik’s Cube down on the table. It was only mostly solved. “I’m going with him,” he announced.

My parents looked at him like he had announced his intention to marry the Eiffel Tower. “What? You can’t just leave everything—“

Quinn held up his hand. “I don’t mean permanently. Alex and I have been best friends since we were fourteen, and I don’t want to have to say goodbye to him now. How long will it take to get to these relatives?”

“About two and a half weeks.”

“Can… can I at least come with him that far, then?” he said, with a little hopeful smile. Quinn looked sad. Sadder than I’d seen him in a while. He suddenly straightened up, going back to a cocky grin. “Plus, people have always called me a space cadet, and this is probably the only time I’m going to be able to live up to that.”

“I want to go too,” said Miri. “He’s my… y’know.”

“You can’t go with us… you’ll be gone for over a month, you can’t just vanish from school like that.”

“I mean… my parents are convinced that you’re government agents, so they’ll probably allow anything if I say you’re involved.” Miri looked down into her folded arms, a little queasy. “And I’ve missed longer patches of school than this and caught up afterwards. You remember ninth grade.”

Quinn and I nodded in unison. We did remember ninth grade.

“I’m going to fail senior year and become a locksmith anyway,” said Quinn, “so it doesn’t matter how much I miss. And as for my mom… eh, I’ve been gone for longer. Basically what I’m saying is that I’m a loose cannon on the edge and you can’t stop me.”

“You have the balls of a Recatrian pigspire to be saying something like that to a person you just saw execute a spectrademon with a handgun,” said Stephanie. “I guess you can come with us.”

Amanda clapped her hands together. “Alright then, the five of us are going to go into space. Pack up; the Order shuttle landed somewhere in the hills around here, and we’re going to have to find the landing zone. Meet back here tomorrow at 10 AM and we can head out.”

The rest of that day was occupied with packing, with my parents’ assistance. I made backups of my laptop (where we’re going, we don’t need Windows), found the two fidget cubes and a stress ball that had all fallen behind my desk, stuffed all the pockets of the backpack with novels, then slipped in my sketchbook and pencils while nobody was paying attention. After a few hours of frantic packing, the sun slipped before the horizon and my parents bid me goodnight. 

I didn’t sleep. How could I? By that time tomorrow, the odds were high that I wasn’t even going to be on the same planet anymore. Ever since that morning, when I’d woken up with a few extra appendages and a shell, I’d sort of known that things would never be able to go back to the way they were. The problem was, I had thought of it as if I could get by by being homeschooled and taking a job on the night shift. Leaving the planet entirely wasn’t even something on my radar. 

I started thinking about everything I was leaving behind. Miri and Quinn were my closest friends, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to miss everyone else. And my teachers as well; Mr. Washington’s art class especially was something I’d miss. And although they were both going with me, eventually I’d have to say goodbye to Miri and Quinn as well. Not like it matters. Miri stopped being my girlfriend from the moment I grew antennae. 

I stayed awake for hours, fighting off sadness and awkwardly shifting around in a desperate attempt to find a comfortable sleeping position with my wings and abdomen. It was well past midnight when I figured out that I could still sleep on my stomach, and not long after, I drifted off to sleep.

 

…

 

The next morning was a much less chaotic experience. After a near-miss where I was almost seen in full bug form by a neighbor walking his dog, we all met up as agreed on the front lawn of my house. There was a slight kerfuffle figuring out how to get a human backpack to fit on an Emissary torso, and then we were off in our beat-up old minivan.

We arrived at the woods just before noon, and after a quick discussion of where we were going, we left the car behind and went off into the wilderness. The best way I can describe the next few hours is to say that, with a fitness fanatic of a mother, I have definitely been on worse hikes. The weather was neither too hot nor too cold, not that I could feel temperature much with my carapace. The terrain was hilly, but it was mostly smooth hills, with as much downhill as uphill. With my parents in the lead, we zigged and zagged across the hillside, steadily moving in a northeasterly direction.

This went on for about four hours before we needed to stop. We were all exhausted to various degrees, not to mention hungry and thirsty. Once I complained about my shell being about to break open, we found a shady place next to an enormous boulder and stopped. My parents, being my parents, had packed plenty of snacks, which we proceeded to eat with abandon, though not so much abandon that I forgot to keep my mouth hidden.

“Are you even sure that the spacecraft is in this direction?” asked Miri, mouth full of trail mix.

“We’re pretty sure,” said Amanda. “The boom from it entering the atmosphere came from this direction, and Steph and I have spent seven or eight hours every day combing the forest for it since it landed. Not to mention, a spacecraft isn’t exactly easy to hide.”

“Hey, Alex,” said Quinn. 

I signaled that I was listening with a twitch of the antennae, even though I was staring at a very interesting rock.

“Do you think you could climb that boulder with your cool bug powers?”

I looked up. It was a really big boulder, bigger than Miri’s house, with a surface halfway between a marble countertop and a gravel road. “Yeah, I could probably climb that.”

Stephanie looked at me dubiously. “I know it looks fun, kiddo, but please don’t hurt yourself.”

I shed my backpack and stretched. “It’s okay, Mom, I’ll be fine. After all, I have these.” I opened up my wings and gave them a quick flutter. Then, without any further ado, I stepped back to give myself a running start and jumped. With my wings pushing me onwards, I soared at least ten feet into the air and slammed into the side of the boulder. For a second I thought I was about to slide right off of the boulder like I’d hit a windshield, but I was able to extend one of my claws and catch it on a depression.

“Are you alright?” asked Amanda.

“I’m fine!” I said through gritted mandibles.

“Good,” she said. “If you get to the top intact, could you look around and tell us if you see anything? A height advantage might be just what we need.”

I gave her a thumbs-up.

The next few minutes were spent focusing intently on the rock in front of me, clumsily crawling up the side. I was never much of a climber, but the new anatomy made it easy; my wings kept most of the weight off of my arms, the extra limbs made it possible to hold onto more spots at once, and even my fingers that didn’t have huge knife-blades on them were noticeably more pointy. I’d say it was almost... easy.

Before I even knew it, I was already up top. I stood up, wobbly at first, and looked around. It felt incredible to be all the way up there, above the canopy, the hill stretching away below me. Knowing that I’d climbed up there by myself only made it more sweet.

“Can you see anything?” yelled Amanda. “Perhaps anything spacecraft-shaped?”

I hadn’t forgotten that I was supposed to look around for our objective, of course, because that would imply that I’m an idiot with no ability to focus. I had merely decided to take in the feeling of victory first. “Right, yes!” I shouted back down, then started searching. 

Slowly turning around in place, I scanned the trees for any sign of something unusual. Even up on that boulder on top of that hill, it was made difficult by all the trees, some of which were so tall that the upper branches were blocking my view. For a moment I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Then I saw a thing. At first it just looked like a bright glint off in the distance; narrowing my eyes and leaning forward, the glint resolved into something metallic. It was shaped like a blunted cone with two spikes or something sticking off the sides, peeking just over the canopy.

“It’s that way!” I said.

“Are you sure?” asked Amanda.

“It’s made out of metal and big enough to stick out over the trees. What else could it be?”

She stopped to say something to the others down there. She was talking normally, which meant that I couldn’t make out what she was saying at all. She turned back to me and shouted, “We’re lucky. If it weren’t for you, we would have walked right past it. Now come down so we can head over there.”

I let myself smile for just a moment, then started crawling back down. Once I was halfway to the ground, I got impatient and jumped off, fluttering my wings hard enough that the landing only hurt for a second.

Everyone else had already packed up, and all I had to do was slip my backpack up over my elytra and I was ready as well. While I was doing that, Stephanie gave me one of those proud-yet-nostalgic mom looks.

“You really are an Emissary,” she said.

I quirked my antennae at her. “Yeah, last time I checked...”

She shook her head. “You’ve been in this body for a day, and you’re already moving like an Emissary. It’s been... sixteen years since I’ve seen another Emissary, and I’d forgotten how jittery you are.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, looking down. “I’m just, like, moving like me, you know?”

Stephanie looked at me dubiously. “Kiddo, you started climbing down that boulder headfirst with all six limbs, until it got too steep and you turned around.”

I hadn’t even thought of that as something unusual until she brought it up. It was just the way my reflexes told me to climb. Before I could say anything in response, Stephanie walked up and clapped me on the shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. You’re always going to be my boy. Now come on, I think you’re really going to like this.”

She started hiking into the woods, but I stayed frozen. How do you handle being complimented about how much you’re acting like your own species? I kept flipping between sadness at my becoming less human and pride that I was making something of myself, even if that something was a giant beetle. 

When I slowly started moving again, I watched every one of my movements, looking for that “jitter” that Stephanie had mentioned. I didn’t see anything except the way I usually moved. Whether my mother was wrong or if she was just noticing another thing I was blind to, I had no idea. After about ten clumsy, self-conscious steps, I realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere by consciously monitoring every step. 

The walk from there, even though we were going through trackless woods, was quick and felt effortless. The energy of knowing that the spaceship was almost at hand kept us in high spirits. We were so focused on covering ground, in fact, that we almost forgot to talk. The sound of shoes (and uncovered beetle claws) mixed with random wilderness noises was the only backdrop. At least, it was until Miri broke the silence.

“Aagh! Shit!”

I turned around instantly. Miri was slapping away at something near the sleeve of her shirt. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Fucking bugs being annoying,” she muttered.

Almost instantly, my worst instincts kicked in. It took all of my effort to hold in waves of laughter while I said, “Wow, that’s really offensive. Way to stereotype, Miri.”

“Oh shut up,” said Miri. “If tiny monkeys showed up and started siphoning off my blood, I assure you I’d react the same way. I’m against me getting bitten in general.”

“Personally, I consider myself a fan of compromise,” said Quinn. “Therefore, I say we let the bugs bite Miri some of the time.”

“Some days I don’t know why I’m friends with you two,” said Miri. “Alex, if you wanted to be useful, d’you think you could get your kin to leave me alone?”

I chuckled again. “You know, you’re being really flip-floppy about whether you like getting nibbled on by insects. This isn’t what you were saying —“

Before I could finish that joke, probably earning myself a swift roundhouse kick to the face, Stephanie stopped in her tracks and hushed us as loudly as she could.

“We’re here,” she whispered.

I started looking where I was going again, and realized that I’d almost walked directly into a forest clearing. A few of the trees around the edge had been knocked over, splintered by a huge force. Stephanie and Amanda drew their weapons, dropping into a military stance. They ranged out in front of us, but my curiosity kept me no more than a few steps behind them.

My parents were focused on the ground, on scanning every rock and bush for potential Order ambushers. I followed their example for a moment as well, glancing around nervously for the glint of a blaster lens in the sun. With no blasters in sight, I turned my attention to the center of the clearing, the thing we were all here for: the spaceship.

It was big, enormous, shaped like a ten-story building placed on top of four black metal stilts. There weren’t any windows, like I thought there’d be; what I’d seen glinting in the sunlight was the ship’s shell, made out of something that looked like pottery. I could sort of make out that it was divided into three sections. The bottom section was jet-black and small, hanging below the point where the struts met the main body. It looked complicated and mechanical, hiding furtively below the main body. Above that was the main section, a plain white cylinder with two narrow wings running down either side. It looked like one of those supersonic jets that faces so much air resistance it couldn’t have a wingspan. Then, sitting on top, was the third section, the blunted cone, complete with its twin spikes sticking out the side. There was also an odd thing sticking out of the top section, a long arc of a bar, extending all the way to the ground, and with a small cage or box that looked a bit like an elevator hanging from the bottom. The whole thing, while huge, felt even huger than it was. Despite being a motionless vehicle, it felt proud, with its chest stuck out, the achievement of its construction giving it emotional heft.

“Holy crap,” said Miri. “It looks like the space shuttle, except... well-made.”

“Yep. That sure is a spaceship.” Quinn was trying to sound uninterested, but I don’t think that he could hide the awe even a little.

“Don’t lose focus just now,” said Amanda. “We don’t know who’s in it.”

While my parents scanned the area with military precision, Miri, Quinn, and I milled around or looked up at the spaceship. I started circling around to see different angles. There was text on it, written vertically down the side in black paint, a script I’d never seen before.

Before I could ask if my parents could read the script, a rustling sound came from the trees behind me. I wheeled around to see something descending from the trees. It had long limbs, off-white scales, and a blaster in its hand.