HE ROSE FROM THE GROUND WHERE HE HAD FALLEN
He the invader was on his feet, howling
it had been such a very long time since he had stood
Three of them mere juveniles in weak human shells
THEY TREMBLED BEFORE HIM
The one that had grabbed Melanie’s leg stared at the useless broken tube its arm had become where he the invader had ripped it free. Blood poured out. He tossed the arm aside and let the three puppets see his teeth, the growling monstrous maw of a true Asura. They edged back. From the right one puppet came, whirling its elongated limbs like sawblades – the invader raised an arm and the muscle had hardened into the dark pattern of a – no, not a shell, for his shell was gone never to return – but it blocked the blades, and his hand closed around those arms and tore them away, and he reached out and the puppet was in his grasp and he ripped and it broke, splattering human gore all across the room. The other came now too and it malformed its host into a great mouth and closed around his other arm, fangs scraping the skin; his body did not yield and instead he grasped something deep within the puppet and pulled and it came out, the host’s organs all wrapped together, and the puppet collapsed like the empty skin of a peeled fruit. One more remained and it had stepped away and now its hands were long tendrils and its head a great circular thing with a hole in the centre, a panic-shape, not according to the plan that the Masters had handed it, and he the invader took his time and stepped towards it armoured boots upon the ground great monstrous musculature all packed with great strength easing him forth, bearing down on the enemy, whose tendrils solidified into a long spear with which it then leapt at him. He caught the spear in hand and snapped it, and the puppet wailed, its head exploding. -WHY TRAITOR WHY DO YOU WHY DO NOT UNDERSTAND EXPLAIN WHY
He punched its heart out. The organ burst with a splat upon the far wall and a machine with the power cut the puppet froze while upright and then fell, landing hard and not moving again. The invader stood resplendent in the offal of his fallen opponents. He saw himself in the fractured darkness of the far window; the snarling bestial form of a Class III – human language couldn’t describe that term, could it? nothing in this ugly language learned from her dysfunctional brain could capture the majesty – but he saw himself and felt it. His leathered purple skin was no shell but was fierce enough and his face seemed to have no eyes but a grand jaw of foul teeth and he was hunched over, burdened by the weight of his own muscle, and atop his head was a five-pointed crown of spikes. He had five clawed fingers on each enormous hand and five clawed toes on each foot and somewhere her skeleton was within as the basis of all this; it was not a true Class III body. It was enough. But he had not thought he would ever get to feel even a fragment of that power again; now, one more time before his death, he had been allowed to know the true might of the Asura.
The man was still here he realized and still watching him. The man Goodwill who had from her point of view seemed so enormous and mighty was to the invader in the Class III only a half-pint stood with his sword covered in splashes of blood. His expression was not fearful but something else. “You.” he said. “You’re one of them.” The invader turned his head towards Goodwill. Goodwill did not look away. “And Melanie – is she in there? What is this? An invasion?” The invader turned the other way and with one stomping foot began towards the lift. “Didn’t you come here to kill me?” Goodwill demanded. The invader paused and then half-turned back. One fist clenched. Goodwill stared and the invader stared back long and hard. Then after a few seconds he resumed his walk towards the lift. He had woken up and he knew that his mission was not to undermine the colony after all but that he had come here to find her so that he could use her to bait the real assassins – the Asura who had come to find the colony’s leader for real – and fight them and kill them. That was information he now knew, that the reveal of the enemy had awakened in him. But for that he did not know what he was doing but knew that he could not remain here. (Plus you can’t take a cock that lovely from this miserable world, can you? – M.)
He paused again. MELANIE?
(Hi. – M.)
PLEASE DO NOT BOTHER ME. I AM SAVING OUR LIVES. With that he went to the lift shaft which now was only a wreck of broken metal and corrosive fluids, and he leapt up it with almost the strength of a true warrior, moulded musculature beyond the power of the feeble human tissue it was hewn from propelling his new self up and out as he leapt and kicked off from the wall of the shaft and leapt again. It was dark but he did not need to see; he had senses other than eyes, which he did not know whether his human half – she – would be able to comprehend, for him they worked and he found his way upwards and out. The room where the shadow had lurked was empty, gore splattered across the walls, as was the corridor beyond it where steam leaked from the walls, which he didn’t even feel through his thick new skin. He had called them juveniles but now he realised it was worse because they had fought with the violence of the Heavenly Ones, the rogues, and now the excessive blood and body parts up here confirmed that this was the case; that the great internal enemy had lashed out and he had been deployed to stop them. SINCE WHEN AM I A HE? (Since I decided you were. Isn’t sharing brains fun? – M.).
The nightclub was worse. The invader had seen massacres before – had carried out many himself – but he had not seen for some time the wanton disregard for any kind of life the Heavenly Ones felt, and now in the carpet of mangled, torn-up bodies scattered about the shape of the dead starship he did not feel ill – one of her feelings, a revulsion at biological processes peculiar to humanity – but felt the weight of a great many problems suddenly pile up upon his newly-acquired shoulders. His feet squelched on the metal floor as he strode out. The girl she had liked was there head shoved into a wall and amidst a certain pulped mass of flesh the giant who had led them to Goodwill was dead with his own sword shoved deep into his chest, posed artistically pinned to the wall by it. There was no more music – he had enjoyed the music – but only the silence of creaking metal and the steady dripping of various fluids from various ruptured bodies. It stank of biology and he liked that.
-WHO?
They had spoken in the old tongue and now stood there before him, stepping out from the shadows. It was a Class III, not some improvised attempt at one like himself; an armoured figured of brilliant teal colouration, mandibles clicking and exoskeleton smeared in blood, four clawed arms extended outwards with transparent razor-sharp teeth lining each claw. -IS THAT YOU, TRAITOR? The Asura’s eyes burned a glassy yellow. -DID YOU MAKE A BODY? The invader readied himself. He hissed at the enemy. -YOU CANNOT SPEAK? OF COURSE. AN IMITATION MADE OF HUMAN TISSUE. AN ABOMINATION. I WILL PUT YOU OUT OF YOUR MISERY. I AM TEAL-AQUAMARINE-JADE.
(That’s…what the fuck does that mean? – M.)
THAT’S HOW WE NAME OURSELVES, the invader explained in his/her/their head. BY SHELL COLOURATION.
(Doesn’t translate well. – M.)
NO. The Asura – Teal – raised his four long claws. -PREPARE YOURSELF, TRAITOR. And with the roar of an engine and a spark of flame from his back Teal soared forward and slammed into the invader, those claws moving like lightning tearing and gouging chunks of leather armour-flesh. The pain was intense but he held his ground and blocked two of Teal’s swipes and thrust a fist at him only for all four claws to swoop in, grabbing his arm. He was lifted up and hurled away and slammed into the hard steel of the starship’s side with a deafening clang. Inside his armour his – Mel’s – head was filled with the peal of a thousand rumbling bells. -YOU DESERVE UNTOLD AGONY FOR THE HORROR OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. FOR INTERRUPTING THE WAR THAT WAS TO COME. FOR SABOTAGING OUR SACRED MISSION. AND NOW FOR LETTING A HUMAN KNOW OUR POWER.
He fell, landing hard on his feet just about. Teal’s four claws snapped open and shut. The invader’s blood dribbled away from the gouges on his new arms. He could not defeat Teal; not with these arms, with their human hands and fingers. A true Asura – which he had not been from the moment he had cracked open his shell and forced himself into Melanie Gaston’s skull – could shape biomatter into any form, could forge any mighty body that was needed; he had to conform to her shape or he would risk damaging her beyond repair. Teal’s yellow eyes burned. -I WILL REND YOU NOW.
(Hey Mr. Invader! I have an idea! – M.)
WHAT?
(Put your hand on some meat for me. – M.)
Teal charged again, engines spitting fire. The invader with no choice with no real ideas followed as she had said and found a body. He put his hand to it and at once its biomass was slurped up into his arm – did she mean to make him stronger? but it did not suck itself into the arm proper but made a shape, bone and matter twisting, and as Teal’s claws swiped for him he found he had blocked them and he had blocked them with not his own arm but a sword that he held in his right hand formed of something like human remains but like his armour hardened and shaped. A weapon! The most human of solutions.
Teal withdrew his claws and then struck again and the invader, figuring out her intent, swung the blade round to meet them – he had never used such a weapon and she hadn’t but she had seen movies and Teal, too, had no experience with such things, and he swung his claws into the blade again and again trying to break it, each blow ending in a loud clang that did nothing. The sword was breaking, the invader saw; but the damage was to it and not he. (More! – M.) He dodged instead of blocking and Teal’s claws sliced open empty air and he thrust the boneblade forward through exoskeleton and into the flesh beneath. Teal screeched and batted him aside, and he staggered away and found a pile of corpses at his feet. He reached down and touched it and it again began to contort and melt around his hand, forming again some kind of weapon out of the slurry and detritus of the dead. -THIS TRICK AGAIN? YOU SHAME YOURSELF.
The biomatter solidified itself into something – a thing he held with both hands, a squat box of a bio-engine with a long saw-toothed blade. (A chainsaw, idiot! – M.). He put his hand to the cord of flesh and pulled it and the engine groaned and roared and the blade began to spin, teeth whirring. The meat-machine’s howl filled the chamber. Teal pulled the sword free from its ribcage and snapped his claws and charged. He swung the chainsaw and the saw’s spinning teeth cleaved through Teal’s claws in a shower of blood and shell fragments. Two claws went flying and with a roar of pain Teal tried to pull back but buzzing the saw came after him, slicing up his front. The armour of a Class III which was supposed to be impenetrable to tank fire and laser barrages and acid streams now bent and snapped beneath those screaming teeth. Blue ichor sprayed out and Teal then with his two remaining arms grabbed hold of the chainsaw’s blade pinning it in place from the sides where the teeth could not touch. Their eyes met over the spastic death of the chainsaw caught between places. Teal’s jaw shot forward, his neck extending. His mandibles stabbed into the invader’s throat. The invader swung the saw up and Teal’s neck was sliced in two. The head went scurrying off into the darkness while the body stood, two remaining arms and elongated neck stump swaying spraying blood like a hose. The invader went to this body aware it was the danger and arced the chainsaw in a gory curve from neck down to groin and sliced it into two halves which at once stopped moving and fell back with a terrible splatter onto the metal.
The invader wheeled about. In his grip the chainsaw began to dissolve until it was only warm slurry slipping out of his fingers to also splat against the floor (guess it’s hard to make a chainsaw out of organic tissue – M.) and he with claws ready searched the enormous expanse of the chamber for any sign of Teal’s – what was her word? – shrimp, the little skittering creature that would given time find enough biomass to form a new Class III. -YOU DOG. It called for him from somewhere far, high and pathetic. -YOU HAVE SAVED THIS WRETCHED HIVE. BUT WE WILL RETURN. WE WILL COME FOR YOU. THE HEAVENLY ONES WILL SEE YOUR ATMAN SCATTERED TO THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE UNIVERSE.
Atman, he remembered. Not ‘shrimp’. But that was only a term from a human faith that was used by them to correspond to his own tongue’s – as was Asura. He felt he was losing himself in humanity, drowning in it.
(It’s not so bad come on.– M.)
SHUT UP. There were other noises now. Sirens. He knew – she knew – that it was the high whine of the militia, the ERCU (Emergency Response Control Unit – M.) coming to see what had happened. To find bodies and blood and an Asura in the middle of them. The invader knew what this meant. He could feel also the pseudo-Class III body beginning itself to break down, the inferior human flesh exhausted by all it had been contorted into. Out of here, he thought. He bid his muscles to work at their utmost one more time and he leapt to the rafters and landed hard upon a walkway, and from there spied a narrow hole in the steel of the rooftop leading out to freedom. Below boots banged on metal and hordes of black-clad figures shouting and snarling were flooding into what had been a little while ago a nightclub, their flashlights upon the machinery and the starship and the rafters too, and the invader hopped up onto the roof out of there before they caught him. He was alone on the roof next and he was feeling light and not in a good way. Chunks of him slipped away onto the rooftop, the muscle losing its tension and returning to the dead flesh it had once been. He did not know where to go or what to do. The mission, he thought. THE MISSION-
(I know where to go. – M.) He leapt. Or she did. The barrier was faded and frayed. He bounced through the city, across the false sky the humans had projected over Junsha’s searing Red Eye of the day and lonely star-dotted tapestry of the night, now pretending to be earth’s own night which he himself knew nothing of, and as he tore through it the falsity shimmered and warped around him. It was projected from emitters across the city’s skyline of iron towers. From so high up their beams were visible and the whole thing was shown as the lie it really was. He slipped on the side of a brutalist tower construct, nearly falling into a trench of high-rise apartments and offices. (Wrong way. – M.) They went the other way. The journey was a blur of fluorescent lights and rushing wind and the fatigue spreading about every inch of him lulling him almost to sleep; she kept them awake and he kept on moving and soon they were somewhere. They had fallen and landed hard – it was dark here, or less light, and there were voices and murmurs. His vision was failing him. Needed to get the sludge off return to pale skin normal face tired old lady’s body (I’m fucking thirty that’s not that old. – M.) – he stepped forward and a gasp, someone staring at him. Person he hated; didn’t he? Or she. Fairy lights in the garden.
Andy held onto him. “Melanie.” she said in a hush. “Mel, what happened? You’re bleeding.”
“I don’t feel like myself.” he said. Or she said. And he reached out and touched her cheek and felt her arms around him. A sensation alien to the Asura as the triumph of reforged flesh was to a human. And yet-
They slept.
–
What did we do last night?
BETTER NOT TO TALK ABOUT IT.
What?
IT DOESN’T MATTER. WE WON’T DO IT AGAIN.
What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?
WE SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE IT. IT WAS A MISTAKE.
What did we do?
WE WON’T DO IT AGAIN.
Oh. Oh no. Oh…what…we didn’t somehow fuck, did we?
WORSE.
Worse? What could possibly-
I AM SORRY. MELANIE. FOR EVERYTHING.
Sorry?
I DO NOT WANT TO DIE.
Her head pounded. Worst hangover of her life after – had that been only a day ago? A full day of a monster in her head and now she was in Andy’s bed trying not to cry from the pain of it. Like something in her skull was trying to get out, pushing apart the bone from within. By now Mel had figured this would not happen; she knew the invader’s deal a little better than before and knew it was stuck in there for good. Anyway. It was definitely Andy’s bed in Andy’s room, same room a day ago (a fucking day) she had broken the other woman’s heart forever in order to save her from the invader and now here they were once more. Mel grunted, propping herself up. She was in her underwear and someone had bandaged the cuts on her arm and on her side and there was a big ole’ shiner under one eye she saw in the mirror, and her eyes too had something else to them. A little bit of something haunted but also a presence that wasn’t only herself.
Sunlight came in through the window faint and ugly. Not really; actually just the Red Eye’s glare filtered through the holos to sort of resemble the aesthetics of old earth sunlight. But she allowed herself the luxury of not thinking about the illusion just this once. Mel coughed and drank some of the water left on the table by the side of the bed. Andy’s water, she thought. She realised then that she was being watched and that Andy’s face was in the doorway doing the watching and so too was all the rest of her in shirt and trousers with hands in her pockets. The expression that her face was wearing was something hard to read that Mel wasn’t sure she wanted to; compassion, sure (good!), but also something else. Pity? No, little tightness around the mouth and a narrowness to the eyes that indicated careful scrutiny and she was still stood too far away. It was fear, Mel realised. Her best friend and lover and worst enemy and the only person in the whole world who could make her feel anything was now – only a little bit, but enough -afraid of her. She swallowed. “Hi.”
“What are you?” Andy demanded. It was the hard voice of a trade union negotiator who had opted to begin with a full-throated assault. Mel was a writer and didn’t really know how to reply to this kind of aggression except with a writer’s ability to dodge. “What, you don’t remember our first time?” she said.
“I mean it.” Andy said. She brushed her fringe with the back of her left hand. Old habit that meant nervousness but nervousness with her always meant the urge to attack. “Why did you steal her body? Why her? What are you here for? Asura.” The last word spat out.
“I still mostly have my body.” Mel said.
“Prove it.” Andy said. Mel moved to get up. “Don’t get up.”
“How the fuck can I prove it’s me if you don’t let me get out of the fucking bed?”
Andy frowned. “I don’t know. But if you’re not some space bugger then you’re going to have to think of something. She would.” Mel thought and thought hard until it made her brain hurt (more). She rubbed her lips together. She tapped a finger against the side of the bed. “Please, Andy.” she said quietly. “It’s me.” A long and dangerous pause followed. Andy swallowed. She approached the bed. She did not touch the sick alien thing beneath the sheets but she didn’t look as fearful anymore either. “What happened to you?” she asked softly.
Mel told her everything. Most things. Started with being drunk and the call from her dad and the shrimp and went all the way through to whatever had happened at JET OFF yesterday, and in relating it to Andy she was also relating it to herself, constructing it from snatches of her own memory and from the invader’s – whatever the difference was – and realising in fact that he had been right and that something very bad, if not quite a mistake because they were both alive, had gone down; herself in a suit of leathery skin-armour but only as a sort of organic battery piloted by the invader but also she had been there too, and they had worked almost as one. Was that it? The great mistake that the invader meant. He was silent now and it was only she explaining all of this as best she could to an Andy with a professional face of concentration, who didn’t interrupt even the part about the chainsaw slicing the arms off of an enemy Asura in a corpse-strewn nightclub. Once she was finished her headache came back, or she remembered it, and she fell back onto the bed with all its lovely memories and waited for someone to kiss it all better.
Andy didn’t do this but she did lean down and touch Mel’s arm. Contact! Warm skin against warm skin. “I believe you, Melanie.” she said, meeting Mel’s terrified stare with tired kindness.
“You do?”
“Yes. And I won’t call the militia. But the others…”
“What? Shan and Xingqi and all those idiots?”
Andy squeezed her fingers and that was good. “You need to watch the news.” I don’t want to watch the news I want you to squeeze my fingers she thought but Andy had let go and gone over to the shelf and came back with a portable tele thick and bulky – same one they’d watched Night Ghost on – and she put it to the day’s news record and played it. Mel saw herself. She saw her leather-skinned self treading upon bodies in the nightclub, saw close-up shots of mangled flesh and butchered men and women. She heard the newscaster a female-sounding man talk about the first Asura attack in federal space in decades; a terrorist strike on the heart of Junsha by a lone Asura Warrior who had slaughtered hundreds of civilians before disappearing into the night. The militia were on high alert and the federal government was on its way and the orbital cannon had been turned to Stage Four Readiness and so on and so on. Mel digested all of this. What do you think? she asked the invader. Did we fail? But he still wasn’t replying. She made to rise from the bed. “Not yet.” Andy said.
“But I gotta go. If they find out you’re sheltering…uh, whatever I am-”
“You need rest. Whatever that thing did to your body it left you completely dehydrated and very hungry. I used my parents’ old med station to feed you with a few nutrient patches, but you probably don’t have enough energy to walk. Sleep for a bit. Okay?”
“If they find me-”
Andy shoved her lovingly down back into the embrace of the duvet. “Nobody is looking for Melanie Gaston. They’re looking for that monster. Which isn’t you.”
“Okay, fucking fine.” Mel said. Andy half-smiled and turned away back to the door and went on her way and at the last second Mel coughed. Andy paused. “Uh,” Mel said, “thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. And I know all that shit you said yesterday…now I know, I guess, that it was for a good reason. But I’ll kill you if you ever say any of it again.”
Now it was Mel’s turn for a sheepish little almost smile. “Sure.” she said. And the door was shut and she was alone with her pain once more. She closed her eyes, after a bit, and tried to go back to sleep.
Dreamscape; swirling cataclysms of colour, pulsing watercolour skies. Below was the barrenness of rock. Fires floating within the air, sparking of chances. And upon the rock a thousand beetles did crawl, the demonic lights of their eyes glowing. This was the world of Asura. And in that one Asura did crawl alone, one creature in isolation. The Masters asked – does the spoon taste the soup? A fool may go all his life without knowing the way. Their golden forms. Asura small and Asura large, fairies of all forms and shapes. Their manifold limbs. Clicking, clacking. Speech without words. The Masters asked – what is Buddha? A pound of flax. Within the great hall an agitation. Invitation to all and sundry. Within was Asura-paradise, the Pure Land – without was The Great And Terrible Storm Of Blood. Ten thousand Kalpa of violence. The Masters asked – who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
You, little one, they said as one voice to the Asura who crawled alone. The Storm has quietened. But heretics seek oblivion. You must stop them. The quest will be given.
The little one understood his goal.
He had shed his might to come here, travelled from god to insect. Such was the glorious wheel of all things, turning, so that kings would taste dirt and dirt-dwellers would sup at the tables of kings. The Masters were blessed now, but later- a feast for the senses, the swirling heavenly tapestry of Maw; home, life, sanctuary. The Asura who crawled alone had a den and within it a family, a mate and a nest, and it was for them he strode forth. The Masters asked – you, who were once warrior, may you become our saviour, though it costs your life? And the Asura who crawled alone answered yes without hesitation, for the Asura who crawled alone knew what life meant. A society of infinite forms; the forging and reforging of flesh, the bending of tools to purposes. It all was only what it was. The Asura who crawled alone spoke with the brood, with mate and nest, and it was understood; the mission would bring the brood and the nest both glory, both the power of honoured ones. The Asura who crawled alone would go forth. Networks amidst networks. A spiderweb of names and places. To weaken them, the Heavenly Ones who would provoke the Storm once more, it was needed. The Masters asked – can the honour of one who has triumphed be measured? Can the virtue of a life well-lived, an era given to all, be counted? There were not enough pieces of sand within all of the myriad deserts of Maw to count such honour and virtue, and all knew it.
Great and furious storms of rocks. The wind-lords played their righteous song. The Asura who crawled alone was launched blind into the infinite abyss. The songs of Maw were played and the manifold swarms celebrated. A chittering, a clattering. Ten thousand luminous eyes in the dark. The wraith of souls, the great dragon. The glitter of the chitinous shapes of the billion children. All praise was given, all hymns were sung.
The Children of the Maw were not as one. Two voices, two spirits. A disunity. Light and dark were not opposites but one but – the Heavenly Ones, those exiles. The Asura who crawled alone did not know – did not understand, could not feel…the squirming joy of life, the endless cycle of the worm who ate its own flesh and excreted out itself and ate again and so on and so forth. They had ended it. The Masters asked – does life go to the strong, or to the versatile? The fool who listens outlasts the warrior who does not. But they did not. They chose death. And you – Asura who crawls – look out at the abyss, the universe, and see only glory, and did it blind you to- there are things of you that are not you that are worse. A blazing shade of teal. Are you not a warrior? Does your essence, that without shell or flesh or soul, that which is contained only without of you, not scream for the defence of the Eternal Truth? The Heavenly Ones, who have betrayed all, are here…the swirling storms of Maw, the endless hostile giver of life…a kaleidoscope of colours beyond and above, a spectrum of sight beyond sight… And we did not fail, he said to her. Not for now. Because Goodwill knows who saved him. He will remember the warrior who was his salvation. The half-glimpse of the splendour of we you call Asura. Oh, he said, to her, I wish you could see it, Melanie. Our sky. It is the most beautiful thing in the universe.
She woke up again. This time better; less drained and more herself and wanting a beer. Her hand was at her temple feeling the plastic stitches in her skull which had by now almost dissolved, leaving behind a neat line of solid scar tissue. There was no wriggling inside of her brain. She grunted, sitting up, and looked at the door hoping Andy would be there for her but found only a door there instead bathed in that same afternoon pseudo-sunlight. So Mel thought about her dreams – his dreams, actually. The goddamned invader had been dreaming for her, and displacing nice fantasies about girls and boys and etc. with some scifi nonsense about planets and kaleidoscopes and a whole lot of barren rocky wasteland. She was mad as hell at him for this but he wasn’t answering her angry thoughts and she didn’t want to start talking to him, felt it would have been pointless anyway, because she hadn’t heard anything from him last time either, thinking about it, and she wondered now what was going on and her head hurt in the normal way and the cool new way at once and she lay back in Andy’s bed and still wanted a beer.
“Mel.” Andy said, emerging.
“Can I have a beer?” Mel asked. Andy frowned. Not scared of her now (phew) but – what was this now, dammit, Mel thought, seeing the sort of skittish way Andy lurked there by the door, not fearful of her, true, but something else, and there was always something else wasn’t there. She sighed, Mel or Andy or both. “I want to…” Andy began. “Don’t get mad, Mel.”
“I won’t.” Mel said, which could have been a lie.
“I asked a doctor to look at you.” Visions of militiamen taking her in, of them trying to open up that neat little scar. Andy waited there still tense. “A union man. Don’t worry. He won’t talk, not even to the cops or the military or whoever.” Andy speaking quickly in that way people did when they were justifying something. Mel didn’t have the energy to get mad but thought she might try it anyway just to see what came out. Andy came over, took her hand. “I wasn’t – I thought you needed it, Mel. The story you told me was so crazy, you understand? So I had a doc come in and I asked him…I talked around the bug thing, but I explained it like a tumour, and he looked you over while you slept, and…”
“And what?”
“It isn’t eating you.” Andy smiled, cautious fleeting little thing on her face. “I mean, it is. But it’s not advancing. The thing in your head. Doc Hayakawa did all the scans his med station could do on the inside of your skull, and the…uh, foreign entity, he said, isn’t growing anymore. It’s stable.”
Mel sat up properly. “What?”
“It’s just…in there. That’s what he said. You have an alien right hemisphere and that’s a whole other mess of different potential problems. But it isn’t growing.”
“That doesn’t…” She tapped the side of her head. “Hey! Invader? You hearing this?” No reply. Mel bit her lip. She massaged the scar tissue like she was rubbing a genie’s lamp. “Invader?” He went on not replying to her and she looked at Andy who was looking at her in that bad way again and she realised that if this Doc Hayakawa was right then maybe the Invader had actually killed himself like he’d said he would and also that she wasn’t in fact going to die from a bug in her brain – which she realised now had been her default assumption about the future ever since waking up in her office with a real bad headache all those hundreds of years ago. She laughed but it came out sounding sad, and leapt forward, full-on went for it, and grabbed Andy tight and hugged her as hard as she could. Andy stiffened and Mel thought, oh fuck, and realised – last realisation of the day, she promised herself – that this was way over the fucking boundary they’d set and she let go as if burned, falling safely back into the bed. Both were awkward for a second as if the contact had left stinking residue upon their skin. But Andy eventually managed to smile again. “You’re – you look a little better, you know.”
“What, now? Come on.”
“I mean behind your eyes. You…it’s good to see, anyway.” A little intake of breath from Andy. Mel had another realisation (Sorry! – M.) and it was that it was sometimes good when people lied to you. She smiled back. “Thanks.” She also knew that she couldn’t stay here now. “Did the doc say I could go home? Or do I have to hide out in the Red House? Don’t think that’d please Shan and the others much.”
“He said…” Andy paused a second. “He said you’re fine. Two days in bed and your body is basically as good as new.”
“Two days?” Mel studied Andy, trying to find the tell. There wasn’t one. “Fuck me. I thought I just took a nap.” She clambered out of bed. Andy didn’t stop her. “I’m gonna…gonna go eat a burger. And drink some wh-water. I’ll get out of your hair. Sorry for – for everything.”
“Mel.” Andy said. But she didn’t say anything else as Melanie pulled on her filthy clothes from the chair at the end of the bed and slipped on her boots and laced them up and took a cigarette from the open pack on the table beneath the bookshelf and went out. There were the usual assortment of union types all throughout the house and they gave her looks and she went on, unlit cigarette between her teeth, and went out into the garden and thank God Shan and Xingqi and Guppy were not there. Mel spilled onto Liberation Road where before Shan had thrown her into her Sunkisser, and the bike was still there waiting for her to mount it and she stared into the Squatter’s Sector opposite, the Waisheng banners and emblems all over the old apartments, and finally she leant on the wall of one of the other terraces and thought to ask for a light from a passing comrade, and with her cigarette lit she inhaled deeply and looked up at the false sky and blew smoke all over herself and coughed and spat the cigarette into the gutter and watched where it had disappeared between the grating for a while. And then she got on her bike and set off home.
And no longer shouting, only occasionally hurting, the other half of her brain whispered to her all the while of glorious struggles yet to come.
Video City 