Oh, hi. School is winding down so I found some time. Still two weeks left, but I hope to start updating more regularly now. Sorry about the wait - I'm glad that I still have people interested! Sorry if this chapter feels like I've been away as long as I have.

Chapter Twenty-One: Hult'ah

Siwili's chest labored to rise and fall. A rattling breath accompanied each strained movement, sounding as though his insides had been torn partly loose.

Tresses had laid him down on one of the wide passenger seats and produced from her back the same medical kit she'd used to tend to Nasira's acid burn. Some distance away, there was the beady glittering of black eyes as the infirmary jafgars peeped over the back of the seat to stare down at Tresses' efforts.

Nasira, too, watched Tresses work, keeping her distance. Her posture was ramrod straight, the nails of one hand digging into the opposite shoulder so hard it threatened to bleed.

Runite approached from behind, coming to stand at her side. His metal arm bumped against her own but she did not unwind in the least. She looked upon Siwili's prone form with single-minded intensity, as though she could demand by watching that he start back awake.

They stood together as Tresses crumbled pieces of what looked like a cement block into a dish. She had lit a flame beneath and tipped a flask of blue liquid into it. Through the combined effort of the heat and whatever the liquid was, the cement melted into a thick paste. Tresses scooped it onto a utensil and pressed it to the crater in Siwili's middle.

He bucked awake, a cry like Nasira had never heard ripped from his throat. It was a foghorn of suffering, so primal and ragged that all but one set of jafgar eyes retreated below the seat, their owners quaking in fear. Nasira's hand was crushed suddenly in Runite's grip, rousing her for the first time from her detached scrutiny. She looked up at him but there was naught to see but the sharp jaw of his mask.

Tresses groped within the kit for the same kind of wicked syringe as before, and then, ignoring Siwili's thrashing, buried the point in his chest and plunged the contents downward. Siwili froze in his struggles, his back arched above the surface on which he lay. Then he dropped back onto it, ornaments clinking as his enormous weight went limp once more.

Nasira's hand was still lost in Runite's for a moment afterward, but he released her as soon as he saw Siwili make a tentative motion to settle himself more comfortably.

Tresses' movements were less urgent now, and when she continued to smear the paste over his wounds, he merely twitched. His green blood ceased its heavy flow after a few moments — the paste must have solidified, or perhaps the heat itself had even cauterized the exposed blood vessels.

Tresses shut the kit after stowing her instruments back inside. Siwili's mottled flesh was perhaps five shades lighter than normal, but his breathing was even. Head tipping, Tresses lightly drew her talons through the ornaments on his chest. She leaned down, pressing the front of her golden mask to his brow, and Nasira took two steps back, withdrawing from the scene just as the kneeling Tresses let out a low trill.

Every step she took sent pain rocketing up her injured leg and burying itself in her hip. Lips pressed together to avoid crying out, she moved as far from the others as she could manage before casting herself into an empty seating bay.

Her hands shook as she pulled the fabric of her pants away from the injury, leaving her in undershorts. Blood was slick on her outer thigh. Still shaking, still flitting over the wound, her hands sought a safe place to land.

A click came from above her.

Runite was standing over her, watching.

Nasira bent back over her leg, breaths shallow, still uncertain. She ought to find a first aid kit like the one she'd used earlier, clean and dress the wound rather than watch it seep slowly onto her skin, but shock had decimated her thoughts and turned the task daunting.

Runite dropped something onto the seat beside her, pressing the center so that it expanded into a similar kit to Tresses'. He knelt before her and she automatically attempted to scoot further away.

His abrupt snarl put an end to her efforts. She sat still as he picked through the kit and attended to her leg. He worked with strict efficiency, swabbing the area once to rid it of excess blood, and then hefted a tool that stapled the wound shut before she could protest. She made no sound, not after witnessing what Siwili had undergone.

The stapler back in its place, she expected him to pack the kit away and leave her. Instead, he reached removed a capsule she had not seen before. When he applied its contents to her stapled wound, a cooling bliss swept over her. He worked it in gently, careful not to aggravate the sutures. Lengthy rumbles rolled from his chest. His work was so methodical that she found herself slipping sideways in the seat until she nearly spilled out of it.

After wiping his hands clean of the gel, he leaned back. He took a pair of metal clamps from the kit and squared his shoulders.

Nasira straightened up, unsure of what he meant to do.

He held the clamp to one of the three bright green bullet wounds in his abdomen and squeezed the extractor. A strangled roar escaped him as Marcus' bullet popped free of the wound and fell to the seat. Nasira's hand moved of its own accord to keep pressure on the wound until Runite had prepared the stapler again.

She held up her hands but could only stare at them as his blood stained her. He did not wait for her to start on the next, so she hastened to be ready to apply pressure over the ensuing blood flow.

Twice more he repeated this process, his howls of torment only increasing. His ragged breathing fought to even itself. A thin sheen of sweat coated his chest.

Nasira held the three bullets, each encased in his blood, cupped in her hand. Her throat closed, her sob was choked —

— as hatred for Marcus swelled anew. She curled her hand, trapping them in her fist, and hurled them as far across the fuselage with as much strength as she could muster. They flashed once in midair, suspended in the light of the cosmos above, before vanishing into the dark reaches framing the room.

She sat again, breaths hard and quaking. The beads of her hijab rolled beneath her fingertips as she worked them. Her every cell buzzed with agitation.

"Your companion." Nasira said. "Can I ask — will he…?"

Pressure on her wrist as Runite slipped a talon beneath the wire of her fanged bracelet. He tugged at it until she had calmed enough to turn back to him. He adjusted so her wrist was within his grasp — two fingers encircling the bone was all he needed to pull her onto him. Her knee on her uninjured side came up, weight braced against the seat, a last resort to prevent her from pressing flush against him. Her other leg was between his. An awkward stance, but one she could not escape from without an arm free to help take her weight off her one good leg.

The visor of his mask affixed her with a flat stare, and even bearing the weight of the last few hours, she couldn't help but wonder what lay beneath. He held her there for a time, the tremors wracking her the only motion between them, before apparently pitying her, taking her arm more securely and guiding her weight onto the seat beside him.

He pinched the fang between two fingers and made the sign How many?

"How many what?" she asked. Hearing her voice aloud caught her off-guard. Her tone was normal, reflected none of the horror or upsurge of emotion she'd previously felt.

A growl rumbled through his chest. He took her hand in his, drew it slowly from her brow to her chin, dipping low over her eyelids in the sign for death. "Thei-de."

How many of those creatures had she now killed?

She thought of the two in the hallway that had alerted her to the truth of Marcus' betrayal. The flashing fangs of the drone who'd almost dragged her into the depths of the reactor core. Of the drone on the catwalk, talons tapping the metal as it hovered over Siwili's prone form.

"Not enough," she said.

His shoulders quaked with laughter. It drew her attention to his prosthetic, which bumped and scraped in its socket. Without thought, she boosted herself onto her knees and swung a leg over him so she straddled his lap. He stopped abruptly, mask pulling back into his chest, but her focus was elsewhere. She slipped her fingers into the socket, immediately felt the mangled metal causing the malfunction.

"There's something —"

His hand was suddenly supporting the small of her back, cutting her off.

A coughing snarl interrupted them both. She turned to see Tresses, her imposing stature filling the opposite side of the seating bay. Runite leapt to his feet, smoothly adjusting Nasira so she was standing with him. Her leg supported her weight easily thanks to what Runite had done to the injury from Marcus' bullet, and there was no pain.

A short, clipped dialogue passed between the two. Nasira tried to move away from Runite but his grasp was such that she couldn't manage it. Tresses held out a hand, so Runite let go of Nasira and moved to unfasten the bearings on his prosthetic. As close as they were, she was able to discern the exact process he took to remove the gauntlet and wrist computer from it. He handed it over to Tresses — the exchange passed over Nasira's head as though she were not there.

Tresses turned the prosthetic over, inspecting the mechanism that allowed it to attached to the socket on his shoulder, then growled.

"Din awu'asa" she said. "Hult'ah-jehdin."

Still between them, Nasira focused on making herself unobtrusive. She was near enough to Runite that she didn't dare try to slip away again lest she capture Tresses' full attention. After Siwili, she could not bear to be the focus of that cutting gaze vectoring forth from those cold, honeycomb eyepieces.

All her fault. He'd been all her fault.

Runite rumbled his affirmation and Tresses turned on her heel, departing as suddenly as she'd arrived. She left no indication that she'd noticed Nasira or thought twice about the compromising position in which she'd found them.

In her absence, they were still disconcertingly close, almost so he towered over her. In the next moment, though, he'd stepped away, concerning himself instead with attaching the wrist computer to the gauntlet of his true arm. He then allowed his wristblades to spring free to be certain the addition had not inhibited them.

"Hult'ah," he said, gesturing to himself. Then signed, Watch.

She nodded. He thumped his chest, then reached forward to shake her shoulder. She stood still for the gesture, did not move as she watched as his form dissolve into nothingness.

After recomposing herself, she set out again. Skirting the bay where she knew Tresses and Siwili to be, she made her way back to the seating bay that housed the victims of the central bunker. Before she could absorb the state of the collective survivors, Remie intercepted her, pulling her aside.

"No one wants to stay here, Nasira," Remie said. Blood crusted the fur on the side of her face, and one of her fleshy ears was sliced in half. "No one has ever seen the beings you're with and they don't feel safe."

"Is everyone alright?" Nasira asked, turning to look at them. Draped over seats, semi-conscious, huddled together. None were untouched.

"Very scared," she said. "Very scared, but alright."

Nasira turned her gaze back to them. Exhaustion spanned their lost expressions. She ought to offer them words but she had none. Not for them, and not for herself.

From somewhere in the midst of these thoughts, she became aware of the chirruping and hiccuping of the nimod infants. The jafgars holding them had slipped into sleep, and did not answer their cries.

Nasira hesitated for a moment, just long enough to steel herself against the prospect of their weight on her strained muscles, their orphaned cries filling her ears. It was a hesitation that she should have been ashamed of, would have been mere hours ago.

She had no time to further linger on this — she felt something slip between herself and Remie and enter the seating bay. Nasira blinked and saw Tresses — suddenly present - offer an arm to the infants; they scrabbled to release their holds on the jafgars and clung instead to her. The three of them scrambled over her armor, cooing and chirping before settled comfortably within the slopes of her broad shoulders.

Nasira unfroze as Tresses passed her. When she attempted to turn, she found that, like Runite's damaged prosthetic, her joints moved in jerky, irregular hitches. She managed to put one foot in front of the other, recovering enough to catch up to Tresses, shadowing her as she toted the infants away.

Tresses moved through the fuselage back towards where Siwili was, bearing the infants as though they weighed nothing. Nasira did not know what she expected Tresses to do, but she still surprised her by merely sinking to the ground, cross-legged and leaning with her back propped against a seat. Runite's prosthetic was balanced on her lap. She worked to correct the metal in the socket, unperturbed by the the nimod infants' spirited play as they wove through the tendrils of her hair. Occasionally she would pause to look up at Siwili, opposite her.

Nasira watched for several long moments, torn between backing away and remaining. Her throat worked up and down, almost choking her. Eventually, she could wait no longer in her sort of half-stance of reluctance. She swallowed and approached.

Tresses ceased her work on Runite's prosthetic, head cocking. Even sitting, she rose to Nasira's naval.

Nasira let out her deep breath and offered her hand. After a moment, Tresses mirrored her. Nasira set her hand in Tresses the way she'd seen Siwili and Runite do.

Tresses carried Siwili out of danger on her shoulders, even as the queen had recalled her warriors. She was undoubtedly the most powerful of the predators and she'd forsaken a chance at the queen's head to save him.

Nasira had lost what she'd spent so long protecting. She'd been unable to stop Marcus from wreaking further havoc, at the cost of a majority of the passengers. To know that Tresses had succeeded when she'd failed brought her some measure of comfort. There was still someone capable of — and striving to - contain the infestation and save them all.

As long as Tresses was around, not all had been lost.

She could communicate none of this to Tresses, and simply brushed her knuckles over her palm. Tresses' head tilted but she accepted the sentiment.

Nasira removed the spear from her harness and discarded it on a seat so she could sit comfortably on the floor beside Siwili. Up close, he appeared both better and worse. His breathing had steadied and the wound in his abdomen was a charred, burnt crater rather than a cesspool of ruined innards. Nasira let her fingers drift through the tangle of trophies adorning his chest as she replayed in her mind a moment that seemed long ago.

His free hand went up to her forehead, and between two fingers, he caught a lock of her hair where it had escaped the confines of her hijab. He followed its natural curl, coiling it around one talon before giving it a gentle, almost halting, tug.

And the trophy he wore around his neck…

It was a piece of twine fashioned into a necklace, with a fang riding between two metal bands. He held it out for her to see.

A child's voice came from his mask.

"Alexa."

Nasira's lips shaped the name over and over again as she knelt by his side.

"Alexa…" she murmured.

When had this hulking predator encountered a human child?

From behind her, Tresses set aside Runite's prosthetic and tapped a command on her wrist computer. Nasira watched as she dialed through its various functions. A hologram shined from its center — a celestial display of the solar system that was her home.

Earth was just where it should be, basked in the light of its sun. It was suspended in the air before her, just a tiny, flickering blue sphere. It pulsated slightly, beating in unison with her heart. She had not known it in years, but still she felt the yearning pull of her home planet. Nasira could not help herself from reaching out to it — her fingers passed harmlessly through the grainy light of the hologram and a strange sense of loss welled in her.

"Please," Nasira said, "tell me."

Tresses pushed a button on her gauntlet and suddenly Earth was dwarfed by its sun. The Earth began to move around it, slowly at first, then so fast that Nasira lost count of each revolution. It slowed to a stop, looked no different than it did before, but a small counter on the side read 454.

Not a precise date, she thought, but perhaps the number of years.

Whole civilizations had lived and died in that amount of time. Just how long did these predators live? Even the oldest species in the alliance was not graced with such longevity. Tresses' people had known Earth before Nasira's had even set out into deep space.

"What happened?"

Tresses leaned back, seeming to consider. She laid her hand flat then gestured to the space below and then above. The sign for a change, a passage.

Then she sliced two fingers length ways down her inner forearm, much like the way her wristblades would spring free of their sheath. Skill, she signed. "Chiva."

Nasira translated. "Chiva. A change in skill. A challenge, like a trial?"

"Kainde amedha chiva," Tresses said. She pointed at Siwili.

Nasira repeated the strange new words, seeking clarification.

Tresses brought her hand up, pantomimed the killing strike of a xenomorph. "Thei-de kainde amedha."

Runite had taught her the first word. Kill. She surmised the second — kainde amedha was what they called the xenomorphs.

Nasira nodded. She had guessed this much. The mark she bore on her own brow twinged. Did that mean, as far as the predators were concerned, she'd undergone the same trial?

"Who is Alexa?" she asked.

Tresses thrust a finger at Nasira, who frowned, still confused.

"Ooman," Tresses said.

"Human," Nasira said. "And he mistook me for this Alexa?"

Tresses dipped her head. She put two fingers to the bottom of her mask, signing Friend. Then lengthened the gesture, turned it more formal. Companion, or perhaps even more.

"They were together on this chiva," Nasira said. "They were companions." She thought of his excitement, how abruptly he had forced her hand to feel the old injury in his middle. He'd wanted Nasira to recognize him. But if as much time had passed as Tresses said, Alexa was long dead.

She thumbed the necklace he wore, remembering how he had thrust it at her. Perhaps it had been a token of their chiva, one that Alexa would have known.

"Thank you," Nasira said. "For telling me."

A low purr left Tresses before she spoke again. She said the words in her language once before activating the playback on her mask, speaking with a gruff male voice. "I'm going back."

Nasira furrowed her brow. Tresses pressed a panel on her gauntlet and indicated the engine reactor chamber, where the hive was.

"You're going back to the hive? Now?"

Tresses held her arms apart to indicate a length of time. Not much. She gestured to her weapons — her shoulder cannon spit sparks when it attempted to pan sideways. It only moved a few inches before dying.

Tresses would ready herself to depart again. Did she truly believe that she could kill the Queen alone?

As if she had sensed Nasira's question, she tapped Runite's prosthetic.

Runite would go with her?

Then Tresses pointed to Siwili, still lying prone. She swept her gesture over where the passengers were.

"I'll protect them," Nasira said. "I'll keep him safe."

Tresses shook her shoulder, the motion solemn rather than an overzealous congratulations. She resettled herself and set back to work on Runite's prosthetic.

Nasira looked up and away, at the burning stars through the observation window. Her next words were so quiet they may not have even left her at all.

"I will."

Nasira needed only to make her way to the darkest, most isolated part of the fuselage before he appeared. She was without weapons, without defense, and it drew him to her as surely as if she'd called out for him.

He dropped from the scaffolding above a seating bay, his entrance silent but for the steady thrum in his chest. He reached out for her, grabbing the harness where her spear ought to be slung and shaking it in reprimand. She twisted out of his grasp but did not move away.

"Long Tresses," Nasira signed. Then spoke, "She says you're going to return to the hive with her."

With his right arm, he thumped his breast over his heart. She did not need to deconstruct the gesture — she could tell it was one of pride, and that it was sincere. He felt no fear, no apprehension, no reservations at all at the prospect of returning to that hell.

This knowledge awakened a desire within her to seize him, to shake him and make him see sense. She too had felt the exhilaration of having staked triumph over the corpse of one of those creatures, but what horrors had buried themselves in the bowels of the ship she wanted no part of. She'd only tried to rid the ship of the threat, to allow the passengers to emerge from the central chamber, to satiate the predator's desire for justice so they would depart and allow Nasira to contact help. But now she did not have the central bunker to provide the passengers that remained safety — what little safety they had lay with the protection of the predators, with her.

She could not leave them now.

"I'm going to stay here," she said. Runite broke from his salute, making an affronted sound. He brushed the mark on her brow with the back of his knuckles, then pointed at the trophies she bore.

She shook her head. There was nothing to be done of him. She couldn't dissuade him from whatever weight his race placed on the pursuit of their trophies, and perhaps it would be an insult to try. "I need to stay. To be with my people, and with —"

She stopped herself before she could say his name. Runite set his hand on her shoulder, gave it a slow shake. His talons curved around to cup the back of her neck as he inclined his head. A rumble slipped from his chest, cradled within the shrinking space between them. Her eyes drifted shut as his mask pressed against her blooded mark.

They remained that way for a time, Nasira's heartbeat thick in her chest, Runite's growl isolating them from what lay outside. Without his prosthetic, he held her with only one arm. Swept up in their proximity, she reached up to his severed side, exploring the mottled scars and gnarled stump of his bicep. She had never seen him weak, knew he was not so, but neither had Siwili been.

She tried to banish the image of Runite, limp and dying, draped over Tresses' shoulders.

Siwili had been her fault, and so would Runite be.

Tresses finished her work within the hour. Nasira stood to the side, eyes following his movements as Runite reattached his prosthetic and then transferred his wrist computer back to its appropriate gauntlet. Tresses' shoulder cannon whined as it swiveled back and forth, now repaired.

Situated once more, Runite picked up Nasira's spear from the seat and held it out to her. She wrapped her hand around the haft, but he did not let go, growling.

"I will," she said.

He waited a beat longer before releasing the spear. She hung it in its place on her harness. He glanced back at Tresses, still adjusting her own weapons, before dragging Nasira a few steps away.

Holding out a fist, he gestured for her to do the same. A small ring dropped into her palm. Smooth, and warmer than expected, like he'd been holding it in the same hand for some time. Her eyes went to the rings that encased his hair, remembering Alexa's token. They were set at even intervals along the length of each strand, and one was noticeably absent.

He pinched the fang on the bracelet she wore briefly, then startled her by moving away suddenly. She still held the ring in her hand as he secured one of his weapons in its sheath, apparently paying her no more mind.

Inspiration struck her, and she hurriedly reached up to her hijab. Partially unwrapped, she was able to remove the beads from it and hold them out to him.

He was suddenly in front of her again, accepting the pearly beads more eagerly than she had anticipated. He tucked them into the socket of his prosthetic, reminding her of the chord that had once looped around the arm of her uniform.

Nasira removed the bracelet from her wrist and slipped the ring he'd given her onto it. Then, instead of cutting off the slack like Siwili had done when he'd given it to her, she used the entire length to rewrap her hijab. The two tokens came to rest on the crown of her head, nestled gently in the folds of the ornamented fabric.

Tresses stepped in, giving her a curt nod and clapping her enormous hand down on Nasira's shoulder. Anticipating her strength, this time Nasira's knees did not buckle. Snorting and shaking her shoulders, Tresses moved away.

Runite squeezed Nasira's shoulder and she reached as far up on his real arm as she could reach and squeezed it. Neither of them lingered — Tresses was waiting for Runite by the door to the fuselage. Runite turned away and within moments the two of them were gone.

Nasira planted the end of the spear on the floor and knelt beside Siwili. Her fingers stroked the swatch of fur for which she had nicknamed him. His fingers twitched at his side, and, miraculously, his arm lifted to graze her shoulder.

"Alexa," said the voice of a child.

Nasira touched his wrist in acknowledgment, and it slowly dropped back down to his side.

The air parted behind her as Remie approached. She did not speak, waiting for Nasira to turn.

Nasira said, "Remie?

"They're awake," Remie said.

Nasira nodded. She took a deep breath and, watching Siwili's mask as his body remained slack, removed the heavy panel from his gauntlet the way she'd seen Runite remove his. It came away easily. She had expected some alarm to sound, for the alien technology to resist her touch, but it did not.

She turned and stood, taking up the spear and tucking the wrist computer into a bag that Remie offered her.

"Let's go," she said.