A/N: I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2009.

This is the sequel/prequel to "Breaking Light". (The framing narrative takes place after "Breaking Light", while the story itself takes place before.) It covers the events of "Breaking Light" briefly during the last chapter, but aside from that it can be read on its own.

This is based on the tabletop game "Werewolf the Apocalypse" by White Wolf (for the framing narrative), and a mash-up of various mythologies thrown into space for some reason (for the main story).

Chapter 1: The Gov Is Mother, The Gov Is Father

Prelude

"I've never told anyone about my life before," Melissa said. "Well, at least not the truth of it, anyway. Never trusted anyone enough, you know? I never knew just who might be working for the government."

Sixshooter looked over at her and grinned wryly. "So, you trust me, huh?"

"Implicitly," Melissa said, propping herself up on an elbow to smile at the Glass Walker.

"All part of my irresistable charm, I'm sure."

Melissa laughed lightly, leaning over to kiss him fondly. "Most definitely," she said coyly.

"So tell me about it," Sixshooter said. "Unless you'd rather do something else with those lips."

"Well, alright. I'm not really much of a storyteller, though. Don't expect this to be the next great bestseller or anything."

"Just poke me if I start to fall asleep or anything. I wouldn't want to miss out on any of the good bits. Like the porn."

Melissa snickered softly. "Wouldn't want to disappoint you or anything, but I'm sure there will be less of that than you might hope for."

"Aw, damn."

Part 1: My Life As a Science Experiment.

I was born in a laboratory. My earliest memories were of lights. People staring down at me intently, taking measurements, poking me with things. I now realize that that was when they were putting in my first implants, when everything became clearer and easier to process, as it were. I didn't quite understand what they were doing, though. Not yet.

The lab was a clean, sterile place, but I wasn't the only child there. I remember playing with the others. They gave us puzzles and building blocks, things supposedly intended to spur creative development and logic skills. There was a boy in my group who could put together a jigsaw puzzle in minutes. I didn't see him again, after we left that place.

We were three years old when we were taken to a different place. We went on a spaceship, and I didn't understand that we were going to another planet. We all filed into the shuttle, like miniature soldiers in uniform all in a row, and up we went.

The kids in the group tried to figure it out. "We're going in an airplane," one of them said.

"Nuh-huh," said another, a girl called Casey. "It's a rocket. Airplanes point sideways. This one's pointing up."

We landed in a docking bay and were taken to our quarters on the ship. The spaceship was huge. I have no idea how big. But we had to walk through what seemed like miles of corridors, to a three year old at least, before we got to where we were staying for the trip.

They had all the children in my group assigned to bunks with a common area full of toys and games, but it wasn't long before a couple of us got bored with it and wanted to explore the ship. It was me and Casey, along with one of the larger boys, by the name of Gordon.

"Hey, Gordon," Casey said. "Lift me up to the panel. I wanna try to get the door open."

Gordon lifted her up onto his shoulders and she reached up and tried poking at the door panel a bit. After a couple minutes of that, however, we realized that it wouldn't be quite so simple. My eyes wandered, drifting about the ceiling, and something else caught my eye. There were slatted coverings in the ceiling.

"Hey, look," I said. "What about those?"

Casey looked where I was pointing, frowning thoughtfully, and said, "I wonder where those go? But how are we going to get up there?" She slid down off of Gordon's shoulders and we looked around the room.

I noticed that one of the duct openings was close to the bunks, and pointed this out to them. "We could probably reach that one," I said.

The three of us climbed on top of the bunk nearest to the vent opening and tried to reach it, but it was something of an awkward placement as it wasn't completely over the bunk and mostly opened over air. When Gordon got the cover loose, it fell to the floor below with a clatter. This caught the attention of several of the other kids, who came over and wondered what we were doing.

"We're going to see what's up here!" Casey said. She grabbed onto the lip of the duct and tried to pull herself inside, but slipped and wound up hanging by her fingers from the opening. "Ack. Help."

Gordon and I grabbed onto her and helped push her inside, then the two of us climbed up ourselves. It was dark inside the ventilation duct, and noisier than I had expected. Our every move clattered and echoed around us, and there was a low thrumming sound of fans and machinery in the distance.

"I wonder where this leads?" Casey said as we crawled off down the shaft.

The ventilation ducts were a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, and without our implants we might have never been able to find our way back to our bunk room. Of course, we didn't realize at the time that the adults had already discovered we were missing and were trying to find us. The shafts were far too narrow for a grown human to fit through, but for a three year old, there was plenty of room to move around. Gravity felt weird up in the shafts, and it seemed to shift a little as we moved along from one place to another. It was a little disorienting.

We travelled on for what seemed like ages, and eventually came to an opening into a room with blue lights. "What is that?" Casey whispered.

"What?" I said. "I can't see." I peered over trying to get a look, but I couldn't see anything from where I was besides the blue light streaming up through the slats in the duct cover.

Casey was already working the cover open, and it fell to the floor with a clang. I winced, wondering who might have heard it that time. She dropped down into the room below, and Gordon went after her. I crawled up to the opening and peered down myself, finding a shelf up near the opening that we could climb down.

"What is this place?" Casey said.

The entire room was cast in blue light from a line of upright tubes leading from the floor to the ceiling. There was some sort of fluid inside, swirling, and each tube had a thing near the middle where, I suppose, people could regulate the flow of the liquid. I had no idea what it might be for.

Casey went over and reached for one of the regulator valves. There was a symbol on the tube above the valve, and I didn't recognize what it meant.

I said, "I don't think you should touch that."

"Why not?" she said.

"Might be like the shower. Spray all over and we'd get all wet."

"Oh, fine," Casey said, disappointed. "Let's go see what else we can find."

The three of us climbed the shelf-ladder back up into the ventilation shaft and began exploring again. Just as well that we left the room alone, as I later realized that the tubes were coolant regulators for the ship's primitive nuclear engines. I'm sure that later on, panicked adults were going over the place carefully to make sure we hadn't accidentally screwed anything up.

After crawling about the ducts for a while longer, we eventually came to another opening that smelled strange. It was like nothing I'd ever smelled before, and Casey, curious as ever, was quick to open up the cover and climb out of the shaft. I heard her cry out for a moment then hit the ground with a thump. I guessed that there wasn't anything to readily climb down on the other side here. Gordon went down after her, and I looked down out of the shaft opening for a few moments before climbing out.

This room was very different from the others I had seen. It was open, and there were warm lights hanging from the ceiling. All around us, there were plants. I had never seen plants before, and wasn't entirely certain what they even were at first. They were arranged in row upon row of shelves, each containing nearly identical plants, but I picked out several different varieties as I looked.

"This must be where they get food!" I said, putting two and two together and recognizing their resemblance to things I had eaten.

"Do you think so?" Casey said, examining the plants. "They smell kinda like food. But they must change it a lot on the way."

We didn't get a chance to muse on the mystery any further at the time, however. The door at the far end of the room opened and several adults rushed in. "There they are!" they said. "Thank goodness you're alright! Never do that again!"

Even as we got shuffled back to our quarters, we all knew that wasn't the last time we would attempt any sort of mischief. But the ventilation duct covers in the children's area were sealed much tighter after that, and that means of escape was closed to us for the moment.

Interlude

Sixshooter said, "You were crawling through ventilation ducts at the age of three? Getting started a bit early on the cliches, were you?"

Melissa chuckled. "Hey, everybody's got to start somewhere."

Part 2: It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye.

Some weeks later, we arrived at our destination. The planet was called Eusebes, and although I heard the name a few times, it didn't really connect to me at first just what this meant. We were taken down in the shuttle again to a new facility. It didn't look at all like the old one. It was bigger, and less sterile, and instead of all being in one big building, this was a lot of smaller buildings with open areas in between. The sky was blue and bright. I remember staring at it for a long time, impressed with the sheer size of it. At the time, I thought it was a huge dome over the colony, with a bright light that turned on and off to indicate when you were supposed to be sleeping.

They had plants, as well. Tall trees growing along the walkways, grass-covered lawns that they let us out to play in, fragrant bushes heavy with flowers. I didn't understand what the flowers were for, as they didn't look or smell like anything resembling food. The first time I saw them, I tried to eat them, but decided that they didn't really taste very good. It was all something of a shock to me, to be in a real living colony rather than an enclosed laboratory, isolated from the world.

We had a school and actual lessons now, and not just playing around with supposedly educational toys. I think it was because we were no longer just experiments now. We were students that they had invested time and money in, and our younger years had proven our usefulness to them. Whatever criteria they were watching for while we played with their blocks and puzzles, we apparently had passed.

They taught us reading, writing, mathematics. Most of us caught on very quickly. There were a couple kids in the group who didn't quite manage to catch on to some things as quickly as the rest of us. After a couple months in, they were taken away, and we didn't see them again. As we learned more, they kept teaching us more and more. Geometry. Calculus. Physics. They got us to calculate the trajectory of a thrown ball, and if we caught it, we got treats. They were all games to us, and we all strove to be better, to try to be the best in the group.

Some of them were more vicious about it than others, though. There was a girl in the group by the name of Tharpie. Oh, Tharpie. Heh. I imagine you'll be hearing a fair bit more about her, but this is where it started. I hadn't really taken much notice of her before, although she'd always played a little differently than the others, she wasn't outright disruptive enough for the adults to take notice of her and take her away or something.

We were supposed to be trying to catch balls. Tharpie would throw them as hard as she could at the other kid's face. Sometimes she'd grab a rock instead and hope they didn't notice. Usually, the kid caught it anyway. Once, a boy failed to react fast enough and caught a rock smack in the face. The adults rushed him off, but we didn't see him again after that.

I asked her, "Tharpie, why did you hit Ander with a rock?"

"He wasn't fast enough," she said. "It's not my fault."

"You might've hurt him," I said. It didn't really occur to me that he might have been killed.

Tharpie said, "So what? If they can't keep up, they shouldn't be here. Didn't you hear the grown-ups talking? We're the best! So who's going to be the best of the best?"

I said, "That's no excuse for being a bitch."

"What did you call me?" Tharpie asked.

"A bitch."

She said, "What does that mean?"

I said, "I don't know. I heard one of the adults say it and it didn't sound very nice."

"Well, you're a bitch, too, then," Tharpie replied. "A bitchy bitch. Go bitch at someone else."

What's so funny? Yeah, so we must have been about four years old at the time, and we already had the term down pat. And I'll hardly deny being a bitch at times, anyway. Heh.

We stayed at the Eusebes colony until we were twelve years old. The group had dwindled a bit by this point, but there were still over thirty of us effectively graduating that day and moving on to our real education. They made a big deal out of it, lining us up in our uniforms and calling our full names. I hadn't really thought about it much until that point that we all had the last name of Omega, while the adults had a wide variety of surnames. I didn't really understand what a surname was for, so I didn't think this was unusual.

"Acacia Omega," the announcer called out first. Casey went up, grumbling about her name. She always hated when people called her by her real name.

One by one they went down the list of names, and then they came to me. I went up and stood proudly at attention, snapping off a smart salute to the woman, and she handed me my piece of paper and dismissed me. I was pleased as could be as I went down to sit with the rest of the graduates, at least until Tharpie's name was called and she went over to sit next to me. Poking me just to be annoying.

The ceremony ended soon enough and we broke off for cake and punch. There were brightly colored balloons and streamers hanging around the room, and I wasn't sure what they were supposed to be for. We'd never had birthday parties or anything of the sort.

Casey said, "I wonder what will happen with us now. Do you think they'll take us somewhere else?"

"I don't know," I said. "They kept mentioning some sort of training. They want to teach us more stuff? Haven't we already learned a lot to begin with? I want to go out and do something already."

"Like what?" Casey asked.

"I don't know," I said again. "See new things. Meet new people. Go places. Do stuff."

Our exposure to the outside world had been limited and very carefully regulated. The few times that we were actually allowed to watch the news, someone invariably wound up rushing in to turn it off the minute something objectionable was mentioned. Even by that point, I could tell that they were already hiding things from us. The galaxy was a big place, and not under as tight of control as the government would like. But at this point, the government was still the big, mysterious They to me, and I didn't yet know just who They was.

I didn't realize that it wouldn't be long until I'd find out for myself.

Interlude

"What was so funny back there?" Melissa said.

"Oh, just remembering when Trigger learned what not to say around the metis cubs," Sixshooter said.

Melissa chuckled softly. "I can imagine. I never met him, but he sounded like an interesting sort." She looked off thoughtfully at nothing in particular. "I wonder what ever happened to some of those kids who didn't make it through the program."

"That early on?" Sixshooter said. "They were probably just reassigned to units with lower requirements. Front-line grunt work, if they couldn't handle the high end stuff."

"You think so?" Melissa said. "Heh. There were times when I imagined them being shoved off into the recycling chutes for disposal, or dissected on a table in a lab just to see what had gone wrong with them."

"Nah," Sixshooter said. "Well, maybe that kid that got hit by a rock. But generally, not, I'd imagine. No sense putting the effort of making you guys to waste, after all."

"So glad you think I'm indispensible," Melissa said with a crooked grin.

Part 3: Military Ethics 101.

The lot of us were taken up aboard a spaceship again to another planet. This was a very different, and far less pleasant, one. Machimos was a dismal place, covered in thick black clouds, and the sun rarely showed its face on the surface of the planet. The only green plants to be found were inside the greenhouses and hydroponics bays. Outside, only a delightful variety of lichens and molds could be found.

Although most of our caretakers were military types, we were soon introduced to our primary teacher, who was a civilian. He was a scrawny, balding, middle-aged man wearing a suit. I remember wondering just what sort of uniform that was he was wearing, and what branch of the military it denoted him as belonging to. Sure, I'd seen people before that were in civilian clothes, but the suit just looked like a uniform to me that I didn't recognize.

"Greetings, students," he said. He had a bit of a stutter. "I am Mr. Ian Woon. I will be your teacher in the matters of social education." One of the boys had his hand up, and Woon looked over to him and said, "Yes, young man?"

"What do you mean by social education, Mr. Ian Woon, sir?"

"First off," Woon said, "I'm not an officer. I'm not even in the military. I work for a living. I'll have none of this 'sir' business."

The boy replied, "Sorry, s- um, Mr. Woon."

"Anyway," Mr. Ian Woon went on. "I'm here to teach you kids about history, culture, literature, entertainment, customs and traditions, religion and philosophy, and in general, entirely too many subjects for one person to be expecting to cover. While I'm doing that, you'll have a whole slew of military types out there eager to teach you how to shoot at people."

In hindsight, I kind of have to pity poor Mr. Woon, even as I spent a lot of time loathing him for his lessons. The greater part of the budget had been spent toward teaching us how to be killing machines, while he alone was there to teach us how to be human beings.

I didn't quite know yet just what he was talking about by shooting people, however. It didn't take long to find out. We were shuffled out to a training field underneath too-bright lights trying to illuminate the black day. We stood in a row at attention as a uniformed man stomped out, inspecting us.

"Is this sorry lot the best that they could send me?" he shouted. "Snivelling children, a sorry excuse for soldiers?" He got up in the face of the boy on the end and yelled, "Do you want to go back to your mommy, soldier?"

"No, sir," the boy replied quickly. "I have no mother."

"Wrong. The program is your mother. And you'll all do your best to serve her to the best of your pathetic ability. You will obey your superiors, no matter what they ask of you. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good. I am Lt. Ajax. You may call me 'Lt. Ajax', 'Lt. Ajax, sir', or just plain 'sir'. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" we all echoed.

That was when our training really began. Everything up to that point seemed like fun and games in comparison. The dichotomy between going from Woon in the mornings to Ajax in the afternoons was always something of a culture shock, but if nothing else, it helped us get used to working in two very different worlds without missing a beat. Sometimes they mixed up the schedule a bit, and we were sent off to study with people other than Lt. Ajax, to learn different things, but usually for the next four years, it was those two that we saw the most of.

I remember Mr. Woon's classes. He took his job to heart and tried to teach us everything he could, and in the end, they were probably more important than anything else I learned there.

"Hypothetical situation," he would say. He set up a lot of these. "You've been assigned to a town. There's civilians here. Women. Children." He paused, looked at us, and clarified. "Ordinary women and children. The town is threatened. You don't have enough support to hold off the attackers. What do you do?"

"Try to evacuate the civilians?" Casey suggested.

"A well enough thought," Mr. Woon said. "Who would you evacuate first?"

One boy said, "The children, of course. They're the most vulnerable."

"No," another disagreed. "You should try to get the adults out. They'd have the best chance of actually making it."

"You can always get more children," someone else added. "The adults have already had years of training. They're more valuable."

Mr. Woon was cradling his forehead in his hands as they talked. "What have they been teaching you?" he muttered. "What haveI been teaching you? While some of your points are valid, they're valid for all the wrong reasons. Yes, Melissa?"

I said, "It's impractical to take only the children. It's unethical to leave them behind to be slaughtered. Evacuate the families together. That'll keep them all calm and working together most smoothly."

We understood the emotional bonds of a 'family', even if we didn't quite understand what it had to do with biology. We considered our group to be a family. We were encouraged to form emotional bonds with our classmates. Sometimes this worked out a bit better than others. There were some of us that just didn't quite get along as well with others.

"Now, say evacuation isn't an option. What else could you to besides evacuate them?" Mr. Woon asked us.

One kid said, "Try to hold the town with what we had and hope for the best?"

"No, that wouldn't work," Casey said. "We should gather some intelligence on what sort of forces the enemy has. Sabotage them if possible. Misdirect them or delay them long enough for backup to arrive."

"Rally the civilians," I suggested. "Arm them with whatever was available."

"Very well," Mr. Woon said. "Picture this, then. You've done what you can to delay the enemy. Your sabotage acts have weakend their forces and destroyed some of their tanks. You've managed to arm the civilians in the time you've bought, and the thirty of you stand with the entire adult population of the town against the enemy. You're still outnumbered and outgunned. The odds are unlikely but not hopeless. How many of you would stand in the face of death to defend complete strangers?"

Some of the students raised their hands. One boy in the back of the room asked, "What were our orders?"

Mr. Woon held up a finger, and said, "Yes, put your hands down, students. A pertinent question, to be sure. The difference being, were your orders to save the town, or to stop the enemy? Or were you unable to receive any at all? Let's assume that you were out of communication with headquarters and unable to receive orders regarding this specific situation. What do you do, and why?"

Someone said, "We shouldn't sacrifice ourselves for these people. We're more valuable than them, and our superiors would be angry if we were killed pointlessly."

"What makes us more important or valuable than them?" I asked. "They're human beings."

"But aren't we better than them?"

Casey said, "Physically and mentally, yes. But that means we should be protecting them, not sacrificing them to save ourselves."

Mr. Woon said, "Casey and Melissa are correct. You are stronger, faster, and smarter than them. But you were, when it comes down to it, created to protect and serve. That does not mean that you should throw your lives away wantonly, however. It all comes down to a judgment call, primarily the judgment of whoever is in command of your unit. When your commander issues an order, whether you like it or not, the rest of you must follow suit to the best of your ability, even if it means certain death."

That was how he spoke during our first couple years there. Always high ideals, but obedience and loyalty above all else. But somewhere along the way, his tone shifted. I don't know what happened to embitter him so, but it came to a head during our last year there, when we were sixteen.

"Hypothetical situation," he began. "You've just received an assignment from your superior officer. You are to infiltrate a colony and assassinate a target, quietly and without arousing suspicion if at all possible. You're to make it look like an accident. Tragic, but unfortunate. Your target: A little boy. Eight years old. What do you do?"

The students thought about this for a bit. "Study the target," they said. "Learn his habits. Watch what he does and where he goes. Pay attention to who else might be watching him."

"Wait," a boy named Gabriel put in. "Why are we being asked to kill this particular target? Is he some sort of gene-mod like ourselves? A cyborg?"

"You aren't privy to that information," Mr. Woon said. "You are expected to obey without question. You are not given explanations."

"Still, Gabe has a point," said another student. "We should assess his abilities and threat level. It's always good to know what to expect."

Mr. Woon said, "So far as you can tell, he has no particular superhuman abilities."

"So, why?" I said.

"You are not privy to that information!" Mr. Woon snapped.

A student suggested, "He might have seen something he wasn't supposed to. He might have information that needs to be kept quiet at all costs."

"But why would he need to die for something like that?" Casey said.

Mr. Woon said, "Did you ever wonder what happened to your fellow classmates? The ones who didn't make it as far as you did?" We all stared at him in silence. "Reassigned, they called it. Euphemisms. You're the product of a highly classified project. They wouldn't allow one hint of it out of their control. You don't know what happened to them. I don't know what happened to them. Does it bother you to think that your former friends might have been killed simply to avoid existence of this project even potentially getting out? Just because they didn't meet up to their standards?"

Tharpie said, "They weren't good enough. Why should it?"

The rest of us said nothing. We didn't know what to say. His original question was entirely forgotten for the moment.

Mr. Woon said, "No. I ask too much of you. At the heart of it all, when it comes down to it, you must be human beings, or everything we've worked for has been pointless. You will mourn for your comrades, because you've been taught to see them as the only family you've ever known. But will that stay your hand when it's the life of a complete stranger that is at stake?"

Casey said, "We should be protecting the innocent, not murdering them."

"Rightly so," Mr. Woon said. "Would you contradict your orders to do what you believe is right, instead? How many of you would do so?"

Only three of us out of the entire class dared to raise our hands. Myself, Casey, and Gabriel. Mr. Woon looked us over silently for a long moment, assessing us thoughtfully, before he spoke again.

"Hold your hearts close, my children," Mr. Woon said. "You're still human. But even if you have misgivings, you must obey regardless, or life will become very unpleasant for you. There may still be hope yet. You are the future. My time here is done."

That was the last class we had with him. We had expected some last exam before our studies finished with Mr. Woon, but we didn't see him again after that day. There was whispered speculation among some of us that he might have been 'reassigned', said with wide eyes and only now understanding the euphemism that had been used. The only thing that could be considered a final exam for military ethics came from Lt. Ajax.

We were all lined up, dressed up smartly in our uniforms, and we were assigned sidearms. Then we were taken off to a large, gray building to the side of the colony. We'd never been there before, but people who had gone in there didn't come out again. It was a prison.

"You will each be assigned to a prisoner," Lt. Ajax told us. "You are to ask their names and get their confessions for their crimes. Then you are to terminate the prisoner once a full confession has been made."

Casey spared me a brief look, and I could tell what she was thinking. What if they were innocent? It was only a brief look. We remembered the words of Ian Woon.

Each of us was taken off to a different cell, and they were carefully sealed, so we couldn't see what the other students were doing. There was an elderly man in the cell I was assigned to. He was a scrawny, withered old man, who looked up at me with tired eyes.

He said, "So they've sent children to do their dirty work, now?"

I asked him, "What is your name?"

"John," he said. "John Douglas." He looked straight at me. Tired, but still defiant. "Get it over with, girl. My time is through."

"I'm going to need to get your confession," I said.

"Confession," he snorted. "I didn't do anything that should warrant dying over. But I should have known better. I should have known the pay was too good to be true, and the contracts that they had me sign when they brought me here. Maybe there was something in them that I should have read more closely. But here, you see? I've been here for twenty years. I just wanted to make sure that my granddaughter would have a better life. And this is the end that they put me to."

I started to open my mouth to speak, but he interrupted me.

"No, don't say anything. I don't need your sympathy, and I don't want you to get in any trouble because of me, either. You look a little like her. Like how she might have looked at your age. Blonde. Blue-eyed." He shook his head. "But no. You don't need to hear the ramblings of an old man. You need my confession. Fine then, you'll have it. I'll confess everything.

"I said some things that I probably shouldn't have. I criticized the government. I criticized how they were doing things here. I said that I thought President Kennedy should step down from office. That she's hardly doing anything, and she's overstayed her welcome, and what ever happened to elections, anyway? But nobody mentions her much anymore, and it makes me wonder just what's really going on. And I wondered and criticized a bit too much aloud, and to the wrong ears, and so I wound up in here. There, there's your confession. I'm guilty as charged. Sedition. Subversive speech. Treasonous leanings. Don't question them, girl. Save yourself. Do what you must."

"Guilty as charged," I repeated hollowly as I raised my gun, and fired.

Interlude

"So you killed him?" Sixshooter said. "Just like that?"

Melissa nodded, glancing away. "Didn't really have much choice in the matter. I never did even find out who his granddaughter was. And I liked Mr. Woon. I hope nothing bad happened to him either."

"Eh," Sixshooter said. "Probably died of old age after spending another fifty years teaching."

Melissa raised an eyebrow. "You don't think they 'reassigned' him for saying those things?"

"They probably told him to say those things. Make sure that any of you that were still having any doubts would obey anyway. Then they put you through that test to make sure you'd listened."

"We didn't see Gabriel again after the test," Melissa said darkly.

"Ugh," Six said. "If he was feeling like being heroically defiant even under something that was obviously a test, I can't imagine anything good happened to him."

"I can't imagine that everyone had as easy a time with their 'subjects' as I did. I don't think the poor old guy would have lived much longer even if I hadn't had to kill him, the way they were treating him."

"The more I hear about this government of yours, the less I like of it," Sixshooter said.

"You haven't heard the half of it yet."

Part 4: Along Came a Spider.

When we got out of the prison and back to our quarters, Casey and I exchanged looks, as we wondered what had happened to Gabriel. We didn't need to speak what we were thinking. We already knew what we suspected and were afraid of. Casey looked a little disgusted about the entire matter, but she hid it and continued to play along, as did I.

The rest of us, minus Gabriel, were taken aboard another spaceship again, leaving behind Machimos and its dismal colony unlamented, but this time the destination wasn't another planet. Our next stop was a space station in orbit of a barren world, turning slowly in space. The station wasn't new. It looked as though it might have been one of the first space stations built outside of the Sol system. After my last few years on Machimos, I hadn't thought anything could get any grungier.

When we got aboard the station, we filed up in a line in uniform for inspection. A woman came along and looked us over. She wasn't a tall woman. Small, slight, nimble. Short, dark hair cropped closely to her head. And she wasn't wearing a uniform that I recognized. It was all black, with silver trim and markings, stripes along the sleeves and collar. A uniform I'd grow very familiar with over the next few years.

"So, you're the group they've shackled me with," she said. "At ease. Quit staring straight ahead. You all look very fine and smart there standing at attention, but that's not going to get you anywhere in the real world. You've got pay attention." Without warning, she moved faster than I'd seen anyone move to slap a boy in the face. "Look behind you." Suddenly she was behind another student, lightly touching his back.

I was stunned. I'd never seen anyone move so fast before.

The woman chuckled softly and stood in front of us again, straightening. "Welcome to Tartarus Station. I am Rika Suzuki, but to you, I will be Arachne."

We had classes with Arachne intermittantly. Sometimes we would see her every day. Sometimes we might not see her for weeks at a time. I didn't realize at the time that she wasn't just a teacher. She was actually one of the seven people who ran the galactic government. Arachne was the head of the covert operations division.

But at the time, she was a role model for me. I admired her and wanted to emulate her. I wanted to be just like Arachne, and learn how to do the things she could do. That was how I acquired my original codename. Shadowcrawler. Because, they said, I was always creeping along in Arachne's shadow.

I remember a conversation I had with her once. "You want to be like me, do you?" she said. She seemed more amused than anything else. "You've got a long road ahead of you, kid."

"I know," I said. "But I'm prepared to travel it."

"You don't know the half of it yet," she said. "I know I make it all look easy, but when it comes down to it, it's a lot of work, and training, and practice. And you can never let your guard down for a moment, because you never know just who might be out to kill you."

"Even here?" I said.

"Especially here," she replied.

I looked at her in confusion. I didn't understand what she meant. I glanced from side to side, as if expecting to see ninjas pop out of the shadows at any moment. Arachne just grinned at me.

"Keep your senses sharp," she said. "See a flicker of shadow. Hear a shuffle of feet. Feel a slight movement of air. Smell a man sneaking up on you from a mile away."

I sniffed at the air. "I don't smell anything."

Arachne said, "Did you know you can tell a lot about a person by what they smell like?" She chuckled. "You've gotta learn to pay attention to everything. Even the smallest thing could be vital to success - or survival."

Later on, she caught me trying to take her advice to heart. Trying to be attentive, keeping my senses alert for every little thing. She just snuck up on me and tapped me on the shoulder, causing me to jump in surprise.

"Not attentive enough," she chided me. "Or too attentive to the wrong things." With a crooked grin and not a further word, she vanished again.

I learned, though. All of us in that group were very intelligent and quick to learn, but there are just some things that implants can't teach you. All the book study in the world won't make up for actual hands-on experience. And - hey, that's not exactly how I meant that. You are such a dog. But I adore you for it. Hehe.

Anyway. I remember our psychic studies. Those were 'fun'. We were supposed to be learning how to resist and counter psychic attacks, so we had a handful of psychics lined up in the room trying to throw us off while we used the various techniques they were trying to teach us to keep them from messing with our heads.

Tharpie was overly enthusiastic, but terrible at it. "You do your worst, head shrinkers!" she yelled at them. "You can't pull one over on me!" She waved her fist at them, then clutched her head and began shrieking, and fell to her knees. I think it was around that point that she earned the name 'Banshee'.

I was good at resisting psionics, but it was Casey who was probably the best in the class at that. She was implacable. Once, all six of the telepaths tried bombarding her at once with each of their powers. Casey just stood there, calm as could be, with this placid expression on her face as if nothing could possibly move her in the world.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. A flicker of shadow, a breath of air, and Arachne was behind Casey. There wasn't time to speak, or even to move. I just looked at Casey, trying to warn her. And Casey moved. She spun about, and slipped away from Arachne's touch.

Arachne just grinned, and gave a gesture to the psychics to lay off. "Very good," she said. "But I think you were warned." She glanced over in my direction. "I felt that, you know."

"Felt what?" I said in confusion.

"Heh," Arachne said. "You didn't even realize what you did? We've been teaching you how to deal with psychics, but we haven't actually taught you telepathy. And I know your implants aren't tied up into the network yet. You were intended to defend against telepaths, not to be telepaths yourselves."

"I'm not a telepath..." I said.

Arachne just chuckled. "We'll see," she said. "We'll see."

She had us thoroughly tested, but much as we tried, none of us could make a connection between any others except me and Casey, and us two only with one another. Even then, it wasn't so much real telepathy as pure thought and intent, no images or words, just immediately intuitively knowing what the other was thinking. Arachne seemed very curious about the entire matter, although almost disappointed in the results.

Nonetheless, they encouraged Casey and me to become very close. I think they were intending on us becoming permanent partners or the like. I'm not entirely certain what they had in mind. But things were a little awkward at first. Yes, I know what you're thinking. I'm getting to it. Heh.

We were moved out of the communal bunk areas and assigned to more private quarters. It was a little strange to me, as I'd never really been alone for any period of time before, but while most of the kids were assigned to individual quarters, I was paired up with Casey.

"This is weird," Casey said, looking around the room and going over to sit on the bed. A real bed, and not a bunk, wider than we were used to.

But we didn't need to speak. Our thoughts and emotions were intertwined and inseparable, resonating with one another in perfect unison. I went over to her and sat next to her, and put an arm around her waist.

"Casey," I said.

"I know."

I realized I could hear her heartbeat. I could feel her breath, and the warmth of her body. We didn't need to speak. We just felt that the thin layer of clothing separating us was too much, so we stripped it all off and curled up under the sheets next to one another. It felt so good, and so right.

What, you want more details? Hey, I didn't say we actually did anything. That's all there even was. We just slept naked next to one another. Hate to disappoint you.

That lasted for a far too short, blissful while. One day, Arachne took her off, saying, "We want to see how far away you can sense what is happening to the other."

We were experiments again. They were testing us. She took Casey to the far side of the station, and it was still clear as day. Then they took her out on a shuttle around the system.

"They're out in orbit of the gas giant," the scientist said to me. "Can you feel anything?"

"Not really," I said, shrugging. "Not that that means much. There just might not be much going on to feel."

"Hmm," the man said thoughtfully.

A few more moments of calm, and then, a jolt of pain shot through me. I cried out involuntarily in surprise. "What the hell are you doing?" I demanded.

"Interesting," was all he had to say.

With each jump came another surge of agony, and I screamed and raged at the scientist sitting passively in front of me. I struggled against my restraints, and by the third such test, actually managed to pop them loose enough to break free. My rampage didn't last long, however. The scientist calmly hit me with a tranquilizer, and I dropped out cold.

A couple days later, Arachne came in front of the class and said, "Today we're beginning your lessons in pain tolerance. I'm sure this will be a most pleasant experience for most of you, but you'll much appreciate it should you ever be captured and tortured for information, or become injured and need to continue your mission regardless."

Tharpie grinned smugly, and said, "Hah. Another chance to prove which of us is really the best at something!"

That turned it all into a competition. We all wanted to prove that Tharpie was the worst at everything. So we each went in eagerly and without complaint. They started off simple enough, but became positively brutal after a while. They taught us techniques to cause pain without permanent injury, and had us practice on one another. Some of us, I think, enjoyed it entirely too much, from one side or the other.

Arachne particularly enjoyed assigning me and Casey to torture one another. I think she enjoyed watching that in her own twisted way. But then there was this one time that things got a little out of hand...

Casey was restrained, face against the wall, naked. Arachne stood by, watching us intently. I couldn't even tell you now whether or not there was anyone else in the room at the time. Whenever I caused her pain, I'd feel a backlash in myself, and I'd begun to really relish it.

She started off crying out begging for more, telling me to do my worst. The pain clouded my mind, and as it went on, I became blind to the fact that she had started screaming for mercy, and then just screaming outright wordlessly. Arachne stepped in, trying to pull me away, but I threw her off. Moments later, the world went black. I think they tranquilized me again.

I woke up sometime later. My mind was hazy. I must have been heavily drugged. I didn't know what had happened. I heard voices, vaguely, at the edge of my perception, speaking. I don't think they realized I was conscious enough to hear them.

"How long should we keep her under for?"

"At least until the other girl recovers."

I was relieved. Casey was alright. I didn't bother to try to listen to anymore. I just let myself drift back into sleep again.

Sometime after, I came to alertness again. Arachne was above me, saying to the nurse, "The drugs are taking effect?" She looked down at me. "Ah. There you are. Rise and shine, Shadowcrawler. You've got a lot of work ahead of you."

The nurse removed the tubes from me and I got up, clutching my head dizzily. "What happened?" I asked.

"You lost control and went into a blind, violent rampage, attacking everyone and everything in sight," Arachne said with a smirk.

"I don't remember that," I said.

"Yeah," Arachne said. "We tried to put you down. It took us three tranqs before you went out."

"It did?" I repeated numbly. "I'm sorry, I don't know what happened."

Arachne shook her head. "Don't worry about it. It's my fault, really. I let the situation get out of control. But you're definitely going to have to learn to control yourself better. We can't have that sort of thing in the field."

"Casey," I said. "She's alright, isn't she?" I realized that I could not even tell this myself.

"She's fine," Arachne said. "Come along."

The lessons became even more vigorous and brutal. Whatever was taught to me, the rest of the class had to learn, and now, we were all learning how to stay calm and focused no matter the circumstances. Naturally, Tharpie was not doing so well at it as usual. I'm sure she must have only barely met their minimum requirements. It wasn't like she was doing far worse than the rest of us. Just that if Tharpie was doing better than someone, they tended to take it as an indication to work harder at it.

I was alone in my quarters at the end of day cycles, however. Casey had been assigned to her own quarters. I was told that this was so that she'd have a chance to recover, but I hadn't even had a chance to speak with her during or between lessons. I also slowly realized that I couldn't sense her anymore.

Finally I decided to take matters into my own hands one night, and snuck out of my quarters in search of hers. Once I found them, I crept inside quietly. She was curled up in bed, sound asleep, and for a moment I wasn't sure I wanted to disturb her.

Casey woke with a start, as though sensing me in the room with her. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"I wanted to talk to you," I said, approaching. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Get away from me," she said, cringing and curling up in a fetal position.

"Casey?" I said.

"Leave me alone!" she cried.

I stared at her for a few moments longer before reluctantly slinking back to my own room, staring at the floor all the way. I curled up in bed, never feeling so alone in my life, and too stunned to even cry.

I barely spoke with Casey after that, and I'm fairly certain that they put us both on modified drug regimens to keep us emotionally stable throughout our training. Because we had to deal with one another for another four years after that. But from then on, she was just there. Just another body in the training room. A severed connection. I couldn't feel her anymore, so it was just like watching a video. A flat image, with no real substance. Not really real.

I went through the next few years like a drone.

Interlude

Sixshooter shook his head. "Man, that really sucks what happened with you and Casey. Here I was hoping for some hot lesbian action and everything."

Melissa chuckled softly and curled up next to him. "Such a dog," she said fondly, leaning over to kiss him. "Well, that's about it for my early life. I'm sure there might have been a few interesting points here or there that I missed, but I'm sure that I covered everything particularly pertinent or relevant to anything else."

"And you didn't even get laid," Six said. "That's one lousy stretch of teenage years, to be sure. They must have had you on all sorts of hormone suppressants or something. All those drugs they had you on messing with your head."

"Probably something or other of the sort," Melissa said, shrugging. "I never really asked. But hey, I can make up for it all now, right?" She grinned at him. "And who better to do it with?"

"Yeah, I'm the best. What do you say we take a break and put the next chapter on hold for a bit?"

"Sounds good to me."