"You expect me to believe that nonsense?" If Zenith was being honest with himself, he was (concerningly) beginning to believe her. He couldn’t tell if he’d been drugged, or if it was a dream, or what was happening. The fur-covered dragon’s words felt strangely right in his head, his rationale struggling to combat them.
"This isn’t a dream, and we haven’t got very long to get on the same page here." The Koshyo in front of him was suddenly covered by a pilot’s outfit, her previously bare form only now obvious to him. Her hands had remained still in the air - her body hadn’t moved an inch. Zenith wasn’t even sure if he had blinked. "Enough proof for you?"
"Uh." Zenith’s grip on his sidearm loosened, his head still struggling to comprehend the rather impossible experience. The dragon subtly grinned in response, the very visible, supernatural fire within her eyes leaving him without much avenue to explain what he was seeing. This was surely just a dream of some kind.
"Good. I’m Doru. You need to get going a bit early." Doru dropped her arms as he let his guard down. Dream or not, this person didn’t seem to want to harm him. The room’s alarms were dismissed without him saying anything, the red lighting turning back to the subtle white glow of the room’s normal lights. Doru gestured toward the lack of alarm with her snout. "Station security did that. They’ll be letting some of your people in here quite soon."
"Blackwood?" Doru nodded in reply. Immediately, Zenith slid over the bed to grab his stuff, but by the time he’d landed on the other side of the bed, he found himself clothed and geared up as he intended to be. The sudden shift was jarring and sent violent chills up and down his spine. That seemed to please the dragon, a soft giggle coming from her. Zenith glared at her, receiving a shrug and a smirk in reply.
"They’re working their way through the station right now. The big transaction you made earlier tipped them off, I believe. So no, the mechanic didn’t rat you out." Doru started toward the door, speaking back to Zenith without looking. "Staying here would be a death sentence, so I’d recommend following."
Zenith was just gonna roll with it. He had to, he figured. Any sense of concern began to feel almost suppressed, and for some reason, he couldn’t help but not care. Doru was surely being honest with him – no, her truthfulness was a fact. Had to be. He followed her out of the room he’d paid for just hours earlier, the halls of the bustling station filled with patrons of the hub. None of these strangers seemed to pay Zenith, or even the Koshyo leading him, much attention. It was a strange sensation, being looked through like a ghost. His amusement would quickly disappear as he remembered the soldiers hunting him throughout the station. Zenith kept alert, scanning the crowd carefully as he trailed a few steps behind the dragon.
The two passed through service corridors and side halls at seemingly random points, Doru stopping at corners to let unseen and unheard individuals pass before continuing. It seemed as if she could see around the corners, especially with how long she’d pause at times. After a dozen or so instances of such pauses, he became convinced that was simply the case. Wouldn’t be that far-fetched considering the preceding events anyhow.
As the duo neared three hours of careful snaking through the maze of a space station while dodging the Blackwood military, Doru opened the door of a meeting room in the space hub and led Zenith in. The door closed behind them, followed by the darkening of the exterior windows of the room – a digital privacy tint of sorts. The dragon stopped short of the nearest end of the vast meeting room’s long table, turning back to look at Zenith.
"Your ships not quite, mmm, vacuum-proof yet, so we’ll have to wait here for now." Doru smiled at Zenith warmly, in a way that was almost scarily genuine. He felt the hold she had on his mind earlier shatter, his rationale rushing back in a wave of questions that screamed through his head. He felt a burst of anger that passed as suddenly as it had appeared, followed directly by utter bewilderment as his mental fog receded. Doru studied him all the while, her confidence and smile never waning.
"How?" Zenith only managed a word, his hand having finally come to rest on his holstered sidearm for the first time since he’d left his room. His lack of cautiousness and fear of Doru while following her left him rather confused. Especially with how concerned he had been about being spotted in the hallway.
"Valen aren’t very, well, spiritual, so you’ll likely struggle with this for a while." Doru continued that unnaturally correct smile of hers. He could read her facial expressions perfectly despite the species difference. It was weird. "The universal language doesn’t have a good word for what I am."
"If this is real, and I’m not just… drugged up in some box somewhere… You’ve gotta be some kind of god or something, right?" Zenith was frustrated with his own words.
"Not really," Doru shrugged. "That would imply that I’m tasked with some specific duty. Simply not the case. Let’s not get hung up on the technicalities, Zenith. Best you refer to me as a "Whim," as the Koshyo do. At least, that’s the same word in your language."
"I, uh, guess that fits." Zenith considered what the definition of "whim" even was as Doru rolled a chair over to him. He sat down and let himself relax for the moment. If she had any ill intentions, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop her anyway. Doru seemed to note his curiosity, her wandering gaze having returned to him.
"In essence, Zenith, I’m one of many. We act of our own accord, albeit rarely. We pass unnoticed otherwise, as it’s our nature. We provide balance, assuming there isn’t. And, most importantly, we tend to not interfere unless necessary."
"So. You’re…?" He struggled to find a word that wasn’t totally absurd. "A superhero?"
"No," Doru smirked. "That would be far more interesting. Whims are more comparable to crew aboard a large craft. We all have our own proficiencies and focus most of our time on those disciplines. But it’s generally smooth sailing, so we don’t often need to act."
"So-"
"Yes, there are many Whims," She interrupted him. "We don’t communicate all the time – there’s largely an unsaid understanding amongst us. Which, no, we aren’t quite omniscient. Just, mmm, more capable in a sense." Doru smirked at him again. "We do use the Exogrid at times. It’s quite handy."
That was a strange idea. Zenith’s hands slid across the arms of the chair he sat in a few times, studying Doru carefully as he processed what she was saying to him. The proximity of the Koshyo’s home planet made her presence seem a little less odd, although it was plenty strange given the only double-digit population of them in space. He’d never heard of any Koshyo looking like this, though. Those strange eyes were unlike any living creature he’d ever seen. He could sense their gaze even if he couldn’t see a pupil. There was a lengthy pause in the conversation as he fought through the questions cluttering his head. Doru didn’t seem to mind. She looked a bit amused, even.
"So, if all of this is true, why are you helping me?" Zenith folded his arms, his curiosity broken with his suspicion. "You know I’m wanted, what would some "Whim" want with me? What’s so important about my situation?" It felt like he was tempting fate a bit with that question, but Doru simply nodded in response.
"That strange message from Blackwood, for one." Doru sat on the end of the table, the printout he’d seen on the science craft appearing between two of her fingers. She handed the copy over to Zenith and he took it. Sure enough, it certainly was paper. "Whims tend to keep an ear to the ground when it comes to the big powers of the universe. That message stood out for numerous reasons. You know a few of those reasons already."
"You’re a space detective then?" Zenith paused, studying the familiar paper that was somehow back in his hands. "A… magical… space detective?" He found himself chuckling at his own words.
"No." Doru laughed, shaking her head. "Valen," she sighed amusedly. "To be brief, this shouldn’t have happened. You and that doctor knew it was wrong. In fact, that entire ship seemed convinced something was up the moment the message came in. That’s why they helped you out in the first place."
"Yeah, I figured. They were… surprisingly supportive." Zenith sat back, studying the rather short message again. "What am I missing here?"
"I said "shouldn’t" for a reason." Doru drops the paper. It vanishes as her hands come to rest on the edges of the table. "I’m simply here to warn you – you’re up against something more than just Blackwood."
"More than Blackwood?" Zenith lowered the paper and looked at her a bit puzzled. "Not sure how things can get much worse than making enemies with the most powerful force in the universe." Admitting that had left him feeling just a bit helpless.
"I’m not the only thing you’ve never heard of before. Your era’s knowledge of the universe is far narrower than you realize." Doru’s gaze trailed away from Zenith, glancing around the room idly. "That’ll become obvious in time."
"Charting Magnus is narrow? You mean there’s more out there?" Zenith’s ears perked as he sat up a bit in his chair, but Doru shook her head.
"I’m not referring to mapping the universe." Doru folded her arms, her gaze returning to the canine. "Tell me, do you know why it is you think?"
"I don’t quite understand the question. That doesn’t seem terribly important, either." Zenith idly folded the seemingly conjured paper in his hands. Doru seemed to watch with great interest.
"A taxi driver does not find the signatures of stars particularly important either, but that’s a technology used by every spacecraft for navigation every day." Doru shrugged. "I’m not looking to, mmm, enlighten anyone with knowledge today, though."
"So… knowing why… people think is important for… something?" Zenith’s head instinctively tilted. Doru couldn’t help but smile at that.
"Not for your current situation. But it is quite significant. Perhaps someone will share such a revelation with the universe at some point." Doru stood up from the end of the table, the folded paper in Zenith’s hands turning to dust before disappearing without a trace. "It’s time for us to move. I can’t conceal us here forever."
"Alright." Zenith stood up, quietly in awe of the strange dragon in front of him. How she could do any of this was fairly beyond his comprehension. He was going to have to keep Doru as an ally, no matter what that entailed. That was certain, more certain than anything else. Luckily, this time, that thought was most definitely his own.
After what seemed like hours, most of which had been stalling for time for the mechanics, Doru and Zenith entered the mechanic’s maintenance bay through an employee entrance. Zenith’s ship was at the end of the maintenance bay, towed there by the same metallic claws riding along the floor that had carried it in from the landing bay. Large metal doors closed behind it to seal off the test launchpad’s airlock, the door alarms largely muffled under other mechanical noise. There was a separate set of doors for the airlock along the wall, of which nobody had entered yet. Otherwise, the maintenance bay looked incredibly busy. It was packed full of employees as well as what looked to be Blackwood military. Evidently, they’d recognized the weakness in the station’s security. Escape through here would be largely impossible, likely only ending in a brief pursuit, followed by death. Doru closed the door into the maintenance bay, the two left standing just at the threshold of the doorway.
"What now?" Zenith went to look through the lack of a window on the door. Was a bit pointless. He stared at the ceiling instead.
"There are a few options here. Your best bet is me acting as a decoy." Doru wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, seeming to just look through the door and walls at whatever was through it. Zenith sighed.
"I’m not looking to get you killed. Who knows what their intentions are." Zenith brushed a thumb up and down across the back of his pistol’s grip, still trying to come up with a decent option.
"Don’t worry about me, Zenith. I’m a bit more formidable than you think." Doru chuckled with a tinge of dismissiveness. "We need these guards out of here regardless. There’s not another route out of here – the other bay is completely sealed."
"Stealing someone else’s ship isn’t exactly good for my survival chances, either."
"Certainly isn’t." Doru looked at him now directly, her smile a little more reassuring than unsettling at this point.
"Can’t you just conceal us? Like you did in the hallway?"
"No, they care too much about finding you. I can only create suggestions; I can’t control such focused intentions. I still had to convince you to trust me in your room, after all."
"Makes sense, yeah." Zenith was a tad frustrated, looking at the handle of the door preemptively. "I don’t want you sacrificing yourself for me, Doru. I barely know you."
"That’s not going to happen." Doru looked quite amused. "Listen. I’ll go out there and act as a decoy. I’ll be fine. Once Blackwood clears out, go to your ship. They’re not going to run it for a test flight for quite a while, so don’t rush."
"And you know that how?" Zenith got a look of moderate disappointment as he realized the answer to his own question. "What if you’re wrong, though? What if they stick around?"
"Are there normally two of you?" Zenith replied with a coy question, grinning at Zenith. Somehow. He looked at the disconnected mirror in front of him that had replaced Doru instantaneously. "Yes, it’s me. You’re not hallucinating, Zenith," she’d reply in her voice, still using his body. It was kind of terrifying.
"That’s… Very convincing." The real, true Zenith touched the doppelganger in some random spots curiously. Everything felt the same as he’d expected it to on his own body, albeit without feeling his own touch. "What the hell are you?"
"You’ll figure it out in time." Doru winked at Zenith. "Follow me. We’re gonna get you as close as we can to the airlock. If they see either of us, hide and I’ll take your place."
The apparent twins snuck through the aisles of ships, doing their best to avoid detection by the scattered military presence within the maintenance bay. The soldiers wore gear typically used for raids – robotic-looking helmets that concealed their faces and folded back their ears paired with substantial, but still rather slim, body armor throughout. Each was toting automatic rifles typical of the Valen military, capable of automatic, slight aim adjustments to correct for soldier inaccuracy. They had earned the rather cute nickname of "Head Obliterators" for that reason. Zenith had absolutely no interest in being on the other end of one of those, especially with the rather weak shields he was issued as a security officer. The helmets had some sort of thermal vision capability, but due to the amount of people and hot equipment in the maintenance bay, Zenith doubted they were using it. He was quite glad he’d paid attention in training.
"Just sit back here and wait." Doru and Zenith were behind a parts rack that was covered in unopened shipments, leaving narrow slits between rows they could look between. The Whim smiled at Zenith one more time, although the familiar face was undoubtedly a tad unsettling. "Don’t worry about me, worry about getting out of here."
"Just do your thing." Zenith smiled back, uncertain of how this was going to go. He was quite literally backed into a corner now though, taking his pistol out of his holster just in case he’d have to use it soon.
Doru took her leave, walking into the open with utmost confidence until she raised her hands in the air as to surrender. Zenith watched his ears flatten on his doppelganger’s head as Doru did a rather convincing job acting as him. One of the guards finally noticed her, swinging their rifle up to aim at Doru.
"On your knees!" The soldier leaned into his microphone as Doru got onto her knees, calling out his location. Others converged on her from the distance, closing in and holding her at gunpoint. Employees working in the area cleared out quickly, leaving this section of the maintenance bay rather quiet and empty outside of the canines. She was held at gunpoint in that position until an officer with higher-ranked colors finally arrived. Doru remained quiet, resting her hands on the back of her head as she looked toward the ground. There was some brief discussion between the soldiers. Then, one of the soldiers pulled Doru’s arms back and down, placing restraint cuffs around her wrists and disabling her shields. Watching a fake version of himself get arrested from a distance wasn’t exactly something he’d expected to ever do, but nevertheless, here he was. He couldn’t help but find it a bit fascinating to watch them work. He’d never seen the military performing operations before in person. It was always just some kind of training recording.
The crowd around him parted as the commanding officer stepped forward, soldiers raising their rifles to point at the now disarmed Doru-masked-as-Zenith. He was holding the clone of Zenith’s issued sidearm in hand. Doru seemed to recognize him, but Zenith wasn’t sure who it was. It was clear from even this far away that it was someone he recognized, but he couldn’t place a name or anything. Zenith hadn’t heard this voice before, either. The noise of the mechanics seemed to have died down as the numerous bat folks stopped to watch from a distance, making it far easier to hear. This kind of thing wasn’t too unusual to see typically, but Blackwood arresting one of their own was highly unusual.
"Zenith, your execution has been ordered," the commanding officer said flatly through the speaker of his helmet. Zenith could see Doru’s fur bristle at the comment, Zenith noticing he was experiencing much the same reaction just then. He figured she’d just get hauled off, but executed on the spot? That’s awfully severe. "Blackwood Military code states that executors cannot obscure their identity, so I shall remove my helmet." The commanding officer removed his helmet. Zenith still wasn’t terribly sure who it was, and Doru didn’t seem to react in any special way to him.
"Law says that citizens of Alpha are owed trial prior to execution, regardless of circumstance," Doru replied, staring the commander right in the eyes. This seemed to give him some pause, the canine’s ears twisting ever so slightly.
"Law also states treason invalidates citizenship," the officer replied, maintaining composure completely. For someone about to execute someone, especially such a young person, he seemed surprisingly indifferent. At least, that’s what Zenith could tell from such a distance.
"And," Doru replied immediately, "treason can only be determined through the courts." The officer looked mildly annoyed now, his ears coming back and brow noticeably furrowing. He couldn’t tell what Doru was doing with his face over there, but it must’ve been a tad inappropriate for the situation. Or, maybe, the guy was just a dick.
"Or, Zenith, a deliberate and blatant act against Blackwood." The commander checked the pistol out, ensuring that its biosecurity had been overridden properly. "Anything else you’d like to say?"
"What blatant act are you talking about?" Doru asked, and the commander glared down at her immediately. He looked rather angry for some reason.
"You killed your best friend because he was part of the sting. And the transport pilot. That’s the blatant act." The commander raised the pistol in line with Doru’s head. Zenith tensed. She was going to escape this scenario somehow, he imagined. Get them to chase her.
"That’s not what happened at all!" Doru cried out. She seemed to fidget nervously, much like he had when he was a kid. She was doing a great job acting like him, that was for sure. "We were ambushed! Olwen was-" The stranger in front of her flinched at the name before cutting her off with renewed, more obvious anger.
"Flight recordings disagree." The commander wasted no more time, his words laced with a growl. "Soldiers, hold. Let’s not make more a mess here than necessary."
The commander’s finger twitched back on the pistol’s trigger as soon as his sentence ended, the snap firing a quick burst of shots into the fake Zenith’s head. The subtle crack of the supersonic, electromagnetically propelled slugs traveling through the air contrasted with the slap of explosive disassembly of the inside of her skull. She’d fallen backward into the red mist exiting her head, rapidly staining the floor with the mostly liquified contents of her skull. Zenith couldn’t help but feel sick at the sight, and that was even despite his training and recent experience with gory messes. That dead body was him, at least to his body. It could’ve been him if things hadn’t gone the way they did. It felt very real, enough so to give him chills.
If it wasn’t for Doru, that’d certainly be him right now. But Doru – she was almost definitely dead. Why didn’t she do anything? She’d just taken the bullet and apparently died. She had told him not to worry, and she had plenty of warning. Surely this was a trick somehow. He had no idea how it could be, but that was his best guess to keep himself from feeling guilty for the time being. She had told him to focus on his escape, so that’s what he’d do. If she’d died for him to leave, which he had managed to lie his way into convincing himself she hadn’t, it had been her choice to do so. For whatever reason.
Zenith continued to watch the soldiers bundle up "his" body before carrying it off to who knows where. The commander lingered behind the rest of them for some time afterward. He still held Zenith’s pistol, his helmet resting against his side as he looked at the smeared, poorly cleaned-up blood stain on the floor. He hadn’t moved much since the execution had taken place. Zenith was getting antsy to move, to flee, but this guy wouldn’t go. The other soldiers had more than cleared out at this point.
"Fuck you, Zenith!" He’d yell, albeit obviously restraining himself, to the bloodied floor. The stranger dropped the magazine out of the pistol in his hand, sliding one of the dense metal slugs out of it. He frustratedly threw one at the ground, leaving no mark outside of slightly smearing the blood around just a bit more. The commander slapped the magazine back into the gun before putting on his helmet rather performatively. He turned to notice the crowd of mechanics watching him, taking a half step back out of surprise. Regardless, he said nothing else and started forward, the crowd having already started parting for him.
Zenith’s mind had long given up on trying to make sense of the situation at this point, focused entirely on his escape. Escape would be quite easy now that the soldiers had cleared out. He slinked and slid behind various bits of cover, rather easily making his way to the nearby airlock door. It didn’t require credentials from the inside, just a simple button press and it opened. His shields kicked on pressure containment as the airlock depressurized and, before long, Zenith had fired up and taken off in the same ship he had arrived in, all without detection. He just had to die to escape.
It had been hardly a day since he’d finished his recovery on that science outpost full of birds. Zenith was properly on his own now. His face wasn’t in any wanted records anymore, which was a plus, but he wasn’t sure what the cost of that had been. Was he ever going to see that Whim again? He couldn’t say for sure. Hell, he still didn’t exactly understand what a Whim even was, and that might’ve been the only one he’d ever see. The image of her, or, well, him, dying kept popping back into his head. He buried it. What had happened, happened.
Regardless, he sat alone in his barely functional ship, taking a second to manually correct its course toward a far-away star every few minutes. The mechanics certainly didn’t finish their work. He wasn’t sure he’d even got all the repairs he’d paid for before he’d taken his ship back. Then again, it wasn’t his money. It was what had gotten him caught in the first place. He hadn’t had much of a choice to begin with. For that matter, it seemed like he hadn’t had a single real choice of what to do until now. As nice as that felt, he’d never felt more lost. Zenith hadn’t exactly had time to prepare, and at this point, he was left with no supplies outside of the single magazine he already had in his sidearm.
He could try and hail Lex, but he wasn’t sure what kind of hell that science team might be going through right now with The Collective. Contacting one of them directly, no matter how anonymous he tried to be, was certainly putting his whole "being alive" thing in jeopardy of being noticed. It was overall a stupid idea. He had quite a few of those while sitting in his ship, idly stargazing. He’d been quite confident that he had a chance, but now he wasn’t too sure. Zenith felt like he was losing people too quickly, too easily. If he couldn’t even keep his friends alive, how would he ever fix this? How long would he even survive, and for what?
After a significant amount of time doing nothing but staring blankly out of the ship, Zenith finally made a move. He turned his seat right to face the info panels, pulling up the Exogrid and searching for open contracts. There weren’t many well-paying contracts that would accept someone without credentials, but that was to be expected. Working with pirates wasn’t something that many were interested in doing. Pirates rarely even posted public contracts, instead using their own underground contract boards. He’d need funds so he could get some decent quality rest, and until then, he’d be sleeping on his ship. Such a prospect would’ve excited him as a kid. Now, though, it was a low. A comfortable low, but a low, nevertheless. He was trying to keep his mind on the ball the best he could, but it was very hard. The faint scent of death that lingered aboard the ship was not helping.
At the very least, he could be happy that Blackwood was off his tail. For now.