Metaphorically speaking, there are two types of backseat drivers; the first is your mother, sat in the passenger seat like a malcontent duck, yelling because you happened to edge over the speed limit in a twenty zone.

The second was a megalomaniacal alien sprawled over several seats to steer a car going at a ridiculous speed, screaming at you because your brain had finally caught up with the situation and you had folded in upon yourself like an existentially depressed lawn chair with a quiet 'holy shit' and refused to drive.

As they barrelled down the motorway at speeds the designers of the small car had never envisioned, Phil pondered, as multiple voices raged, laser guns sparked, and car tyres screamed, the fact that these things aren't always metaphorical.

As car chases went, theirs was probably not the most dramatic. Blackout drunks in hummers had wreaked more carnage in a single night than the solitary fiat speeding its way down the A30. But, as a person subject to car crashes could testify, the smallest incident could feel monumental when your life lay on that thin line between continued, painless existence, and the slow death you faced when being mangled by a careless lump of hot metal. Sliding into a ditch feels like plummeting off a cliff. Losing control on icy roads feels like a roller coaster from some sick nightmare. Airbags sucker punch the unsuspecting with force that would make Muhammad Ali proud. This...

There was no comparison to what this was—parts of truckers spiralling past the window, collisions happening, left, right, and centre, weaving their way through the fabric of disaster like a particularly capricious needle—

Holy shit.

Not helping was the fact that Diz was driving. Diz drove like a man who's having a seizure paints; badly. He drove as though there was a bomb strapped to the car which would detonate if he didn't switch gears every five seconds. If there was a vehicular equivalent for throwing yourself bodily down the stairs, this was it. Apparently, contorting yourself enough that your head was under the dashboard as you drove somewhat hindered your performance. Who knew?

Quiz was helping—

"Roundabout!"

Another series of screams. A Sudan to their left swerved into the dividers.

Phil amended: Quiz was trying to help. Unfortunately for everyone involved—mostly for the blue alien himself—communication between Diz and Quiz was...not the best.

"Go left!"

"Left?"

"Right!"

A yank of the wheel sent the car veering merrily into oncoming traffic.

"You said right!"

"The other right! As in, you were—" Quiz pinched the bridge of his flat nose. "Just-just go left."

"THERE IS NO 'OTHER RIGHT'!"

"Diz—"

"YOU WERE A NAVIGATOR FOR THE ENQUIRY, FOR ALPHIM'S SAKE! YOU KNOW THERE'S ONLY ONE LEFT!"

Imagine a bad soap opera and a comedy going at 95 mp/h, because that's pretty much what it was.

Viz was still shooting at whatever was happening behind them. Phil was pretty sure that they were no longer being followed, and even more certain that their pursuers were being at least somewhat hindered by the general disarray they were causing. Like the dad who does everything in his power to avoid the unmanageable mistakes his wife calls children, Viz stolidly ignored that fact and kept firing. Phil wondered, the heat of a nearby explosion warming his cheek, what role he played in that imaginary family; anxious, wine-addict mother, or cool older cousin who occasionally does meth?

Finally, its reserves run quite dry, Mrs Smiley's car gave a noncommittal splutter and a heaving, shuddering lurch, and shrugged itself off the road to roll to a rather resigned spot on the shoulder. The occupants looked at each other in universal horror as, with the abstract air of smugness held only by nonfunctional inanimate objects, the engine gave a last, hearty cough and settled into long overdue retirement.

They were out the car in the next second. The one after that saw them hooking their hands under the lip of the car's chassis and they had over turned it by the passing of the next few moments (the aliens contributing more to this endeavour than Phil who was, despite his best efforts, still a fallible human and not endued with some some freakishly powerful, extraterrestrial strength). As the corpse of a vehicle rolled gaily down the incline of a ravine, Phil reflected that, when none of them spoke, they actually made for a good team.

With the cars zipping past them regaining their fluidity, now that they had taken their tomfuckery into a ditch, the renegades slipped down the incline in the vague hope that the agents would fail to notice their absence and pass them by. As plans go, Phil would be the first to admit that it was not particularly good, nor was it a plan in which he had much faith. But sometimes, a simple strategy triumphs over the general idiocy of the world; the agent's black car sped obliviously on, ignorant of the car in the ditch and the figures that crouched under it until long after night had fallen.

Crawling around the forest in the dark was, Phil decided, one of the less enjoyable ways to spend an evening. In fact, he would go so far as to say that it was not an enjoyable activity under any circumstances. By the end of the hour, he had conclusively decided that forests in general were a bad idea and that anyone who disagreed was clearly dealing with some deep-rooted issues. By the time they reached an acceptable clearing, evenings and darkness in general had also been ousted from Phil's mental list of enjoyable things.

Viz had not explained why it had been imperative for them to reach a forest. Diz had not explained why he had Smiley's gun. Nobody had explain what the actual hell was going on...

Which all changed, as it often does, with a campfire made of damp, spitting wood, a clearing slick with wet mud, and a distinct lack of bonfire related niceties such as marshmallows.

As with the backseat driver situation, these things are usually more metaphorical.

•~*{0}*~•

There are certain people that the world at large knows not to trust. Even in the direst of circumstances, their help is to be met with tepid caution, whether it is freely offered or otherwise, regardless of whether or not other aid is readily available. Diz was one of those people; his honesty was universally regarded as being at the height of unreliability.

He was also the only one Phil could demand answers of.

The less you're aware of the better, as far as I'm concerned...

Quiz! He doesn't even know the full story...

So, he faced Diz, exasperation and malcontent having become dangerous, a dry-weather crackle of tension in his voice, and the alien relented, with all the good humour of a condemned prisoner. To either side of him sat Viz and Quiz, neither quite recovered from the disheartening shock of their decrepit space shuttle; Viz kept turning the irreparably mangled remains of his glasses, handling them as gently as one would a living thing, and Quiz seemed to have melted in on himself, dissolving like a blob of candle wax. Between them, Diz sat rigid, a still, knife-blade figure, stern, bitter, and immobile. Opposing him over the wetly crackling fire, Phil liked to think he looked the same.

"Tell me." To him, his voice sounded distant, as though someone slightly behind him had called out. "Tell me everything. You owe me that."

Diz didn't blink. The firelight caught in the protruding orbs of his eyes, blurs of radiance moving like lava-lamp fluid through the inky sea of soulless black. His voice was a low, lyrical hiss, seeping like venom through thinly smiling lips.

"Should I tell it like a story?" Diz rasped. Fire caught oddly about the scales of his face, making the skin pitted and shadowed. "Since we're all gathered so nicely about the fireside, should I tell it like a story? 'Once upon a time...' Is that what you want to hear? Or is this to be some kind of confession? 'Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...'"

Phil folded his arms and held the other's gaze with the authority of someone much older, much harder, and much more dedicated than he.

"Tell me," he repeated, softer that time; like the smoke curling above the flames, like a great, tame, grey cat, whose thick pelt hid claws. Something snapped sharply within Diz's glassy eyes, their warm iridescence gone, and words spilled from him like water, thoroughly dousing whatever warmth the evening might have hoped to harbour.

"I suppose," Diz began, rotating one of his hands in a contemplative manner. "I should start at the beginning, as this won't make much sense to you otherwise. Our planet is located in the Andromeda Galaxy and, for as long as anyone can recall, we have been at war with the neighbouring world, Alphim. I think it started over a quarrel about ownership of our shared moon?" Here, his tone turned questioning, and he looked to Viz for confirmation that failed to come. "It doesn't matter; the moon's gone, in any case. Regardless of reason, we have been fighting for too many years to count. Such is the extent of the war, that military service is now mandatory for everyone old enough to fight.

"Quiz and I met in an indoctrination centre. I was training to manage dreadnought vehicles, and he was studying navigation in preparation for entering our intelligence force, the Enquiry. We got along relatively well, but such was the nature of war that we only knew each other a short amount of time; I was shipped out soon after completing my first course, due to a shortage of fighter pilots on our main front, which is a series of asteroid belts and uninhabited planetoids.

"My commander there was Viz. I was one of fifty men in that squadron, and that squadron was one of ten in our sector.

"So, for three years, we fought the battle, first on the main front, then on tertiary, then running insurgence missions. Meanwhile, Quiz was accepted into the Enquiry as a Control Navigator for basic operations. All of us thought we were doing the right thing..." Diz trailed briefly off, voice dying and dissipating like smoke. In his fire lit eyes, Phil could see the ten, dreadnought ships flying out to do battle with nebulous others, streaks of gold in the vacuum. For a few moments, the ships and the lives within them were tangible, but then Diz blinked and continued, and they were washed away by the veritable ocean of black. This time, there was an odd quality to Diz's voice that made Phil shiver—at least, more than Diz's voice usually made people shiver; Diz was a thing of the uncanny, and people very rarely felt fully at ease with him—it was a depth that felt beyond all oration or explanation but unavoidably consuming. Not his customary rage. Not then. It was somehow deeper than anger.

Phil didn't like to think what it might be. Even the campfire seemed to shy from him.

"17/13/1854. 1200 hours. All ten squadrons were issued an Enquiry officiated order to run a reconnaissance mission over some territory on the western flank that we had allegedly regained in a recent push. The operation was to be overviewed by the Control Navigators, and we were denied the use of our own.

"They were our government. We had no reason not to do as they said.

"We trusted them."

The fire cooled and shrunk in its cradle of earth. Many ghost stories had been told by those that sat by its side, but the raw bite of this one set it in squirming retreat. Calmly, Diz took twigs from a pile situated close by and coaxed it back to vigorous life, only resuming when the meek dance of the flames had recovered. In the fresh light, Phil could see the green fingers quiver.

"As was usual for missions where we would be out of the visual range of the other ships, we kept in communication through radio comms. The Enquiry told us that the area was deserted, that the enemy had been chased out. Our job was to check the perimeters and surveil the damage done to the land that was now ours.

"Everything was going fine.

"Then Valiant, our flagship, stopped responding. We asked the Enquiry to check, and they told us that a dust storm was interfering with the signal for distance communication. It was a very dusty area, so no one questioned it.

"So nobody panicked when Gladiator when silent. Or Warrior, or Imperial, or Dauntless.

"It was only when they took Champion that we realised. Somehow, the signal blockers failed that time...we heard the first explosion...then static. When Destroyer got to her...the ship...the crew...there was nothing left. And then Destroyer was gone too...

"It was an ambush, of sorts. We had been lead to a place as fodder for the enemy, and we were dropping like flies. The Control Navigators were silent and the line to the Enquiry had gone dead.

"The last of us tried to gather together, to try and fight, just three ships left: Duchess, Saviour, and ours, Merciless. Allegedly, the last two found each other, went down fighting, as it were. I don't know. We never reached them; Alphim's forces got to us first.

"We hadn't been rigged for a fight, you see—there didn't seem to be a need for heavy artillery. It made no sense to drag precious supplies out with us on a simple recon mission, in our own territory, no less. So we had nothing but light arms when they came for us. Half a fleet, fully equipped. We...we didn't stand a chance." In Diz's liquid eyes, the sparks of those ships were still falling, cinders. Phil shuddered but found himself unable to look away.

"The last thing I remember is the engines failing, and trying to wedge what remained of Merciless behind a crag of rock, out of sight. Then...nothing; I woke up in an Enquiry cell." There, Diz paused, as though to properly absorb the gravitas of his own story. Whatever emotion lay in his eyes had moved beyond bitterness, beyond the most wrathful of rages, transcended anything so simple as hate or grief. It was ugly and raw and Phil felt strangely captivated by the sheer mania if it. Utterly still, the only sign that Viz was paying attention was the fact that he had stopped playing with his broken glasses. Stripes of wet painted Quiz's cheeks, and they glistened in the fire.

"I didn't know," Diz continued at a length, voice carefully measured and smoothed table-cloth flat with the care of one who is undertaking minimal tasks to distract from something larger, "if anyone else had survived...it seemed...unlikely. The ship...well, it wasn't in the best condition. When the Enquiry agents came to speak with me, they wouldn't tell me how many had died in that massacre. Not for want of me asking; I made the same request of them that you made of us—'explain, you owe me that much'. And they did." The open wound of a smile made its return, jagged and empty. "A distraction, a diversion, they said. Something to occupy the attention of Alphim's fleet while a countermeasure snuck in behind them. We were bait. All ten ships, an inconsequential, government sacrifice. And because I had failed to die alongside my crew in battle, I was to be executed—it would be bad for morale if such a story got out, they said.

"And that was it. No thanks for our service, no remorse for the deaths of those we had known for years...we were pawns. They betrayed us for some provincial victory and planned to send us to our deaths where the enemy failed."

If life were a film, or book, or play, the odds are that it would have started to rain at that point, if life had as keen a sense of the dramatic as any of those examples listed. Disappointingly, the air remained dry and light, the sky dark but cloudless, and Phil solemnly reflected that even tragedies could be done poorly. There were no clouds to weep at the revelation, no heavens scream in mourning, no thunder leant the scene the immensity of its pathos. Instead, the fire crackled with is dutiful cheer and, somewhere in the distance, an owl began to call. Maybe, to someone, somewhere, it made sense; violent and bloody tales of war imparted on as routine a night as one could hope for, in the sanctuary of quiet, a liminal space beyond time. Maybe, to someone, it made sense...

Not to Phil.

Surely the enormous magnitude of this massive injustice deserved some sort of outcry? Yet nothing in the demeanour of the world suggested that whatever divine force ruled the universe had taken offence at the travesty. Perhaps this was all the retribution those trusting soldiers would receive; three faintly maniacal terrorists hell-bent on destruction on the most arbitrary of bases, like the misdemeanours of school kids.

Outside of Phil's mind, the story, in all its acrimony, continued.

"I had fought for them for years, I was not about to lie down and die for them like a good, little dog. I tried to escape...it did not go as planned; I failed three times before Viz found me, along with a few others from the squadron, who had survived their respective crashes. None from ours...several from Duchess, a few from Saviour...but none of ours...hardly anyone had made it out...

"Even less survived our break from the Termination Camp they had us in. Four of us got out alive; me, Viz, one of the engine crew from Champion, and the commander of the Valiant. He...he died shortly after...two days into the fortnight we spent wandering...

"Which is where Quiz comes back into the story. I knew that the Enquiry were unlikely to initiate a search on one of their own. Viz hacked into a net link and found his address and—"

"You all showed up without warning," Quiz murmured suddenly, a tone of reminiscence entering his voice, something that was fond and sad in equal measures. "Three bloody strangers in army uniforms raving about how the government lied to them. Quite the shock at 2200 hours."

Diz continued, apparently unconcerned with the interruption, for there was no snappish reprimand delivered to Quiz. "We stayed there for several weeks—our kind heal fast, which is something of a blessing—and in that time, we—Viz and I—came to the conclusion that something had to be done.

"They lied to us. They had probably lied to others. I shudder to remember how many raids we conducted where the enemy were 'conveniently' out of the way. And yet, nobody questioned them. Their power was absolute. Our whole world was corrupt and no one could see it...

"We could do something. We were no longer part of the system. We could fix it...

"It took some devising, but we developed a plan; the Enquiry's foul influence was too widespread to completely eradicate, so...so the whole planet...we would have to end it all, if there was to be peace on that world. Leave enough survivors to start a new system and—"

"You destroyed your own planet," Phil stated flatly. Not questioned; there was, at that point, no doubt in his mind. The aliens were capable, they had their motive, their maniac conviction that they could rid the world of malice, and this is where it began; with a corrupt government and the callous sacrifice of a few ships. Dominos had fallen, butterflies had twitched their wings, and one act of political incompetence had led to genocidal peace-keepers.

"Not quite," Diz muttered, sounding a little abashed. "Our planet is protected enough to withstand incendiary missiles from Alphim; we wouldn't have even made a dent in security. We needed to start smaller. So, we resolved to find a smaller, more vulnerable planet, rid that of any evil it may harbour, and return to exact our revenge only when our forces were assured.

"And to find such a planet, we needed a navigator."

Quiz, who had started to uncurl, shrivelled when Phil turned to look at him, as though he feared the condemnation of one, insignificant gaze, having avoided all but the most paltry of accusations thus far. Had he looked, he would have seen no such judgement in Phil's eyes, only the wearied expectance of someone who knows that they are to be exhausted further before the tale is out; no longer was Phil angry, or confused, or damning—just tired, down to his bones, the knowledge of this new hour weighing heavy in his skin. In truth, they all were, even the fire, which had once more begun to dwindle. Nobody moved to relight it.

"Quiz came with us when we left. He saw the sense in what we said. The engine man...he...he didn't come with us, put it that way. We stole a fighter ship, something light, fast, and small, and left the solar system.

"They chased us, of course, and we went further and further afield to avoid them. Eventually, we left the Andromeda Galaxy altogether."

"And you ended up here," Phil whispered, voice sapped to the lowest murmur. Night had fallen, and downy reams of shade clung like soot to his words. Diz inclined his head, and his own sentences cast shadows as he grimly brought about the conclusion of his tale. Neither Quiz nor Viz had reacted to the summarised retelling of their shared history, but sat stone-faced, monolithic sentinels to the grotesque distortion of their lives. Both had receded, without moving, swallowed by encroaching darkness until only their merest impression was visible; the crook of several elbows, the edges of twitchy fingers, the curves of naked scalps. Gargoyle creatures, nightmares.

"And we came here," Diz agreed quietly. "With the intent to destroy the planet, in order to test our weaponry. Only to find the planet we chose largely innocuous. Too innocent." His eyes narrowed slightly, ember limned slits of black. "Largely thanks to you. What we extracted from the minds of you and other abductees proved that the goodness of your species outweighed the level of corruption in your present society. Your survival was put to the test, a final test in which we forced you to show ingenuity...and you passed. When given the choice, you rescued your friends and prevented the annihilation of your home. You 'defeated' us. Earth was to be spared...and that would have been the end of it..."

Something had to give; there was blame in the situation and it sought an outlet as a river seeks a bed. As rivers will, it found a channel, a natural avenue through which things can flow...

Live wire sharp, Diz rounded on Quiz.

"And we would be long gone, by now, if somebody hadn't decided to sabotage me!" Bayonet eyes fixed firmly on Quiz and, burningly, refused to let him escape. Quiz howled something shrill and negatory in wounded response. Viz looked silently on, the glasses in his hands still.

There was more to the argument, infinitely more, but if you had asked Phil Eggtree to regale you with the specifics, he would be hard pressed to tell you, having vacated the scene shortly after the first verbal blow was struck. A peculiarity of the forest is that moving a few yards through the trees can completely obscure your starting point, particularly if you walk at night; the weak firelight failed to stretch itself out to him and swiftly gave it up as a lost cause. In strange silence, in striped darkness, Phil began an earnest contemplation of his trainers and the earth they stood on.

Many things could have been discovered, during what promised to bean intensive period of soul searching, revelations forfeited by the insistent blare of a phone. Phil's phone.

19 missed calls. 16 new messages.

The incoming call was from Smiley's phone and it was unthinking instinct that made him that the call so casually, despite the rather obvious signs that he might want to prepare himself for a more dramatic confrontation. But he didn't, and so was especially jarred when the first words the voice on the phone uttered were not 'hi', or 'how are you', or even 'I missed you', but—

"Phill Eggtree, what have you done with my mum's car?!" A frantic voice somehow managed to both whisper and scream. Caught off guard, Phil could only answer honestly.

"Um, it's in a ditch at the minute. On a highway—don't ask me which one." Then, recognising that this was not the most consoling thing to lead with: "hey, it's fine. The car's fine, you'll just have to get someone to tow it. Check the news, we might be on that."

Unfortunately for him, this reassurance made lamentably headway in pacifying the enraged girlfriend tapping her foot many miles away. Another voice on the line emphasised this regret with a quiet expression of: "you're fucked, mate."

"And where," Smiley quivered, "where is my dad's gun, Phil? Where is it?" Her tone trembled with the sort of tremors that could easily transition into either tears or a slap.

"Diz took it," Phil answered, trying to inject his numb honesty with some thought or feeling, and achieving partial success. The day's labours had been vampiric, leeching at his emotions, and clawing them into some semblance of order was a wretch. "I've got it now, Smiles, but there's no bullets left. It's safe, but there's no bullets."

A low whistle from the phone. "Diz? Really? Wow. He's fucked."

"Why are there no bullets left? Phil, what the hell is happening?" Smiley's voice was forceful, all hard-edges, despite the wavering that suggested that it might break. It sounded like slammed doors and torn pages, and, for once, Phil held all of the careful gathered jigsaw pieces and was at a complete loss as to what to do with them.

"Why'd you think, Smiles," he mumbled tiredly, speaking more to the leering, uncaring faces cradled by the tree's branches than he did to her. "There was a shoot out. Their ship's ruined, and there was a shoot out, and a highway chase, and now we're sat in the woods. There's no marshmallows and everything is awful." That last was meant to sound comical, but escaped in a dry sort of croak that rendered it more distressing than amusing. Truths leaked from him, like water from a broken tap. "The ship was completely destroyed, Smiles, there's no way they can get away in that. And now their military is here looking for them, because..." He trailed distantly off, trying to compress the revelation of the last hour into comprehensible words. His exhausted mind failed him. "Oh hell, Smiley...I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do anymore."

"So come home."

And the world crumpled as though it had been constructed from cards, the simplest solution blowing it flat.

Go home.

Forget it all.

Leave everything behind to wilt among the trees.

Phil shut his eyes. Faintly, he could hear the snappish voices behind him growing louder, harsher.

It is invariably, when we face the world alone, without the support of our friends, in times of great pressure where we learn absolute truths of our character; once upon a time, Phil had, somewhat proudly, believed himself a hero. In many respects, he was not wrong. Time and time again, he had saved his friends—he had believed he saved the planet, however false that assumption proved to be—from disaster. But he had never accounted for the fact that such heroism had ultimately resulted from selfish desires and childish resilience: he had wanted to go home early; had had wanted to escape back to earth; he had released his friends from their dreams in order to keep them; he had released everyone from the facility for similar reasons—Diz in particular because he was necessary. Phil was neither cruel, nor indifferent; but pragmatism and altruism rarely get along, and most are either of one breed or the other.

Phil was a pragmatic man. And he was tired of the endless game.

"Come home," Smiley said.

So he went.

Briefly, he considered the rectangular remote still lodged in his pocket, considered leaving it as a parting gift, before deciding against it. The ship it would have otherwise connected to was useless, and the reveal of this fruitless device would only serve to twist that knife. He would keep it, he decided, as a final reminder, a memorial for a childhood that had felt so much brighter, so much more triumphant than the espionage of the world as it stood.

With a departing glance back towards the source of the muffled shouting, Phil set off towards the sounds of the highway in the distance.

With minimal regrets, Phil started the long walk home.