In that moment, the man displayed an astonishing amount of balance and upper body strength. Propped up on his useless legs and one crutch, he managed to get in a good strike.

Brice raised his crutch, hitting me again and again, polished wood cracking as it made repeated contact with my skull.

To tell the truth, not that much physical pain. The emotional pain I found unbearable.

Struck by blow after blow, I collapsed on the floor and cried.

I know, I know. The man was a fool for attacking a deadly Ss'sik'chtokiwij. I could have fought back, but I still considered him a friend.

I curled up in a ball, sobbing as I let the beating happen.

The wood chipped and broke off his right crutch, revealing an inner metal rod. At last the man stopped, leaning on the crutches, gasping and panting for breath. "Damn. I thought these things had backbones!"

Groaning, I got to my feet. "Brice, I'm not your enemy."

"We'll you sure the hell aren't my friend," he growled.

I opened my mouth, but he hobbled to me and shouted, "Shut the fuck up! You've lost your right to talk!"

I sighed, looking away.

"You've given him his forty lashes," Kihoon said.

Brice clopped around to face him. "What are you trying to say, kid?"

The boy shrugged. "Nothing. I only meant that if a pirate fucks up, the captain gives him forty lashes and sends him back to his post."

Brice's shoulders slumped. "You watch too many movies, kid."

"Look. I saw what that thing did. It had a chance to kill me, and it didn't. That's all I'm saying...Besides. He just laid down on the floor and took a beating."

"He killed Sarah," Rebecca whimpered. "`Doesn't kill like t`others, but he s-still k-kills."

It felt like my heart just broke into a million pieces. "Rebecca, that wasn't me! (Thanks). It was Sydjea! She got the wrong idea—"

Brice whirled around, his features fiercely contorting in anger. "I didn't say you could talk! Do it again and I'll find a gun and shoot you!"

He turned to face Kihoon. "Do you really want this thing hanging around with us? Because he hasn't had the greatest track record so far. In fact, just about every time the shit is about to hit the fan, there's Bernie, hanging over us like some fucking albatross of death!"

The boy took a deep breath. "The way I figure, you either gotta kill him, or he's going to be an albatross."

"Y`could p`him back ou`side," Rebecca mumbled, still apparently too distraught to form full sentences.

"No," Brice said. "Bernie's too fucking smart. He'll find a way back in."

The lights dimmed.

"Shit," he muttered. "I thought Barbara had that thing fixed."

"Sh' needs`afix `sumpin `inna power`ant." It seemed the trauma of seeing her friend's bloody corpse, and being terrified of me, had robbed her of fluent speech. She'd seen several deaths before, violent ones, even, but I guess this one hit too close to home.

Brice rubbed his face. "All right, Bernie. You want back in the gang? Fine. But you're going to have to earn it. In my book, a killer is always a killer, no matter how much water you sprinkle on his head. So if you want to earn my trust, excuse me, our trust, you're going to have to work for it."

Not a big fan of grace, that man. I swallowed hard. "What do you want me (maranatha), want me to do?"

Brice fixed his eye on my head. "I need you to kill the Megabitch."

"No!" I cried, clutching my head. "I can't! (Chair). She's my mother!"

"The power plant is in need of repairs. This isn't just video games and bullshit. If we don't keep that thing going, we won't have air. Backup power only runs for so long."

"No..." I moaned, cowering on the floor. "I love (hello), I love my mother! This is family! You can't ask me (thanks), can't ask me to do this! There must be another way!"

"Sure," Brice mocked. "We'll just kick her out of the power station and let her run around! That worked real well for us last time!"

"She's much too (God), she's much too strong!" I whimpered. "Even if I wanted to kill her, I couldn't. The (Moab), the last two times I fought her, I had help."

Brice sighed in frustration.

"Throw Megabitch into the lava," Kihoon said. "Like you did with my mom."

"We can climb (chair), we climb walls."

"Yeah," Brice groaned. "There's that. And the fact we could royally fuck up the generator." He looked away, stroking his beard thoughtfully.

"No, what we need to do is blow her ass up." He frowned at me. "Hey. Bug face. How many of you guys are left?"

"Just me and mom," I stammered.

His jaw dropped in surprise. "All of them? They're all dead?"

I nodded. "I just killed Sydjea outside. I can show you the body if you want."

His Adam's apple bobbed. It seemed that I had impressed him, perhaps enough to even regain his trust.

"Must we...blow up my (hello), my mother? Are you sure there's nothing else we can do?"

Brice shook his head violently, his long hair flailing around his face. "This isn't Marvel's Avengers. We can't just shove her into some kind of giant null entropy tank and drop her into the ocean..."

I had no idea what he referred to, except that maybe we couldn't imprison her.

"And since we don't have any machine guns...We're going to have to get creative."

The geology lab contained a surprising amount of dangerous chemicals, a vast cabinet along one wall heavily stocked with a wide array of acids and bases, a fine resource for all the mineral extraction operations being carried on elsewhere on the base.

I gazed at an interesting array of rock samples, jeweler's instruments and measuring tools, the quartz sample the size of a medicine ball, its interior exploding with multicolored crystals, a bland white rock dusty with powdery residue, probably gypsum, and a glittery black cube of mica.

In case you wondered, they had labels. Well, except for the weird Archeron natives. Sample A36, for example, changed its swirling pattern with the passing of light, and B404, well, if you didn't know any better, you'd think it had hair.

A huge cylinder of rock, a core sample, stood in the center of the room. A couple more in the corner did appear to be large and irregular enough for a child to hide inside, just like Sarah told me.

As Brice collected the supplies necessary to complete an explosive, toying with parts of a Bunsen burner, I folded my claws in prayer, begging the Great Ss'sik'chtokiwij above for a peaceful resolution to our current situation, and to spare my mother's life.

Rebecca, in the meantime, sat quietly in the corner, staring at me with unease. "I want my mom."

The man stopped in mid-hobble. "Sorry, kid. We're officially under quarantine. Until Megabitch is out of the way, I don't want anyone down here. We've already got plenty enough blood on our hands as it is. Am I right or am I right?"

She gave him a reluctant nod.

"It was a lucky thing they were out at the research station."

"Not `ucky `nuff."

"Yeah." He rubbed her head. "They should have taken you with them. That was really irresponsible."

"`Sposta stay w' Sarah."

Brice sighed, limping to another tool locker.

Kihoon, in the meantime, idly stacked rock samples from a crate into a crude sort of little tower.

While Brice put together his explosives, I and the girl just silently stared at each other for a long time.

At last, I said, "I'm really sorry about Sarah. She wasn't just your (manna), your friend, she was mine as well." I swallowed. "My best friend. But Sydjea took that away from me. She wanted (perfect), she wanted to eat her, Rebecca! Imagine! Eating my best friend!" I wept. "How can Ss'sik'chtokiwij be (maranatha), be so cruel?"

"You didn't eat her?"

I shook my head sharply. "How could I possibly eat someone I loved that much! It's disgusting! (Maranatha). I was a fool to trust Sydjea."

Rebecca stared at the floor, lost in thought. "Sarah was my best friend too."

She looked up. "I'm sorry you have to hurt your mom."

I had nothing to say to that. Technically, I didn't have to do anything to Mother. I laid down under the work table, staring despondently at a wall.

I wished I could tell Mother to leave, but we weren't on good speaking terms. Besides, you can't just go up to a Ss'sik'chtokiwij laying eggs and tell her to move. Once you set them down, that's it. "Can't Barbara just walk (Jebusite), walk around my mother?"

"I don't know..." Brice scoffed. "The last time she tried something like that, the Megabitch kinda ripped her fucking head off! The way I see it, if you've got a hornet infestation in your very own house, you can either be a pansy and work around the nest, or you can take the proactive approach and spray the shit out if it!"

That made me feel even worse.

I resumed my vacant staring, mentally debating my options, or lack thereof.

What could I do? Warn Mother? But that would make me a traitor!

Still, to save her life...

If I told Mother to hide, she might come back out and kill everyone.

The humans needed the power plant to run their oxygen systems. While some could reasonably survive without electricity by camping out in hydroponics, not everyone could fit in there, not without destroying the crops.

Although Mother didn't seem to be doing anything harmful by quietly laying her eggs in seclusion, she still might venture forth and kill people.

I gazed at Rebecca, thinking that, if I never had a larva of my own, I would be content to claim her as my symbolic offspring.

I would kill to protect her.

Hers was the only opinion I still valued.

"Rebecca, If I could somehow get (Jesus), get my mother safely away from the power plant, away from you, and make it so she can't hurt you, would (manna), would you still want me to kill her?"

She frowned, shivering with fear. "Y'gotta n-null enemy tank?"

"What's that? I've never heard of such a thing (chair)."

"Dunno. S'like an `quarium, I guess."

I shook my head. "No...I don't think we have one of those."

Brice shook his head derisively. "That thing is a hazard to human life. We can't store that bitch anywhere without risking fatalities. If you could somehow devise a giant container like the one Tony Stark put Loki in, I'd be really impressed, but the fact is, you're not Tony Stark, and we lack his resources."

I gave him a blank look, probably readable, despite him not seeing my eyes.

"Never mind."

"And you say I watch too many movies," Kihoon muttered.

I followed Brice to his tool shed in hydroponics, watching him collect more supplies, ammonium nitrate, beer can bombs, strange little containers wrapped in wire, small blinking devices (possibly detonators), strapping them to bandoleers. To me, Rebecca and Kihoon, he gave something called `Molotov cocktails.'

We took the elevator upstairs, skirting Mara's severed lower torso as we crossed the field.

Slow progress with Brice's disability and injuries, but we made it out of the farm, through the upstairs hallway to the entrance of the geothermal plant.

Brice handed me Rebecca and Kihoon's bottles and the clicker for a Bunsen burner. "Here's the plan: Toss these in your mother's little nest. Make some hard boiled eggs. Get her pissed enough to come out, and then we'll stick her full of explosives." He demonstrated how to light the rags.

"But-!" I protested.

"What is it now?" Brice groaned.

"You're not only making me (angel), forcing me to murder my mother, you're making me kill children as well!"

"Deal with it. It's tit for tat. In my book, Sarah is worth at least ten of those eggs, maybe more. Don't you agree?"

I swallowed hard. In my opinion, Sarah's death wasn't mom's fault, and even if it were, I wasn't sure if one could fairly weigh any sum of Ss'sik'chtokiwij children against a human child. I mean, I loved Sarah dearly, but enough to say she was worth more than one larva? It offended me as much as certain human arguments about the value of different skin colors.

I responded to his question with a diplomatic, "I agree that Sarah is very valuable."

"Look. You said eggs are what's keeping her in there. I want her out."

I gulped. "But!"

"From what I hear, when those eggs hatch, they go flying in the air and stick to people's faces. I'd definitely call those unsafe working conditions, and that's putting it mildly!"

The lights went out. Life support, I thought.

I stared into the dark, trying to focus my heat vision.

For a moment, I only saw floating dots, then, to my surprise and delight, they solidified into a red-orange `ghost', a human shaped heat blob.

I only wished I didn't have this terrible task ahead of me.

"I'm sorry, Bernie. It has to be done."

It took awhile for the power to come back on, but it did.

"It's a quality of life issue. Your mother could have picked any dank smelly cavern on this godforsaken rock, but instead she decides to plop her big fat ass down in a place that affects the lives of hundreds of human beings."

I stared at the floor.

Brice took Kihoon's key card. "I got to level with you, Bernie. Everything you've done up to this point, trying to save our butts, well, not exactly saving us, mind you, but trying, it's all basically Boy Scout stuff. Rescuing the Johnson's cat from a tree."

I telegraphed my bewilderment well.

"The point is, it was only for us. What you're doing now, though, this affects hundreds of people. You're not saving us, you're saving America. Metaphorically, I mean. It's like America. That might not have much significance to you, but to us, that's huge."

America.

Despite California being submerged beneath the Pacific, the trees being in short supply, and the entire east coast being dominated by an Islamic Sharia government, it still inspired feelings of patriotic devotion. Even I have been occasionally swayed by the nationalistic spirit in some of the films I have viewed, particularly the ones about Abraham Lincoln.

America.

Metaphorically.

Doing a great deed for the larger whole.

But at my mother's expense.

My shoulders drooped.

"Why can't you (yes) do this?" I said as Brice ran the card through the door scanner.

Brice sighed. "Why do you think? I'm just meat on a stick. You're the sleeper cell."

Trying very hard to convince me, he added, "I mean, a double agent, like James Bond."

I didn't understand all the subtle geographical nuances about James Bond or international politics, so I just accepted the idea that 007 fought to protect the United States.

The door came open, revealing the red chamber with all its flashing machines and retracted walkways.

The lights brightened, dynamos whirring to life as big clouds of steam blasted up from the depths.

There, at the end of the passageway, Mother nested peacefully among her eggs beside a row of transformers.

Clutching the Bunsen lighter and the handfuls of bottles to my chest, I crept through the opening.

Brice told the children to "Get the fuck out of there and hide."

The door remained open, locked into position somehow, but I still felt like a gladiator in a cage match with a lion.

I crept closer to Mother, rattling bottles as I trembled nervously in her intimidating presence. "Mom?"

Humans have it easy. In their debate about abortion, they only deal with one infant creature.

Does life begin at conception, or later? They ask. At what stage in development is it considered a child?

Ss'sik'chtokiwij, on the other hand (or claw)...a little more complicated.

Is a socmavaj considered a child because it moves around on the floor and tries to latch onto your face? Or is it the larva that is a child, because it requires a host body, and is therefore not `solitary sex', if you will?

Ss'sik'chtokiwij don't have sex ed. There are no `Mommy, What's Happening to My Body' books, though if I ever figure it out myself, I think I'll write one. I would have asked mom a long time ago, but we had grown apart.

That being said, I understood enough to figure out a few things, at least:

More than one species of fetus. When mom had me, I don't think she used a socmavaj. She just stuck her suaakudsi into the victim, and I hatched from there. Apparently a very young Ss'sik'chtokiwij uses this as their primary method, which leads to the production of a sort of `drone' such as myself.

Later on, as the female gains greater sexual maturity, she lays the larger egg, which, strangely enough, lays its own eggs, creating...well, not sure exactly what it created, because Mom never did this before, but I imagined it meant bigger, tougher, or otherwise formidable Ss'sik'chtokiwij. After all, such a complicated, elaborate process had to mean something better or more advanced somehow.

Before I could properly form a theology, mom roared at me. "I never should have birthed you. At the very least, I should have broken your neck before those humans had a chance to poison your mind."

She paused, giving me a wary stare. "What is that you have in your claws?"

"Nothing." I set the bottles down. "I love you, mom."

"You keep saying that, but would a loving daughter murder her sisters? Would that really be the act of a daughter who loves her mother?"

I wept bitterly.

"You killed Sydjea too, didn't you?"

I only sobbed in response.

"You don't understand," I cried. "(Chair) you never understand."

"No. I understand quite well. You are a human in a Ss'sik'chtokiwij shell. You are a fraud!" she practically screamed. "A hawednar! You are not my daughter! You ceased to be my daughter the moment you were put in that place with the cages!"

So there it was. Officially disowned.

"Get out of my sight."

I didn't move.

She stabbed a claw in the direction of my one eyed friend in the doorway. "Out! Go back to your kind, you brainwashed human in a shell!"

"Mom..."

She shook her head, pretending not to listen.

"Mom. This is important. If (yes) if a socmavaj hatches, is it really a Ss'sik'chtokiwij, or (perfect) does it only become a Ss'sik'chtokiwij when it lays an egg in someone?"

She shrugged. "Socmavaj die the moment the egg is deposited. I don't consider them anything. Why?"

"Aha! Life begins in the carcass!"

I lit a Molotov cocktail, throwing it into the nest.

I lit another, and another, creating a fearsome conflagration around my poor mother. The eggs caught fire, foul smelling black smoke billowing up to the ceiling.

Roaring in agony, mom leapt out of the flames, bashing my head into the concrete as she hissed in my face, slowly cracking my throat. "Killing you right now would be too merciful! Before I end your pathetic excuse for a life, you will witness the death of every last one of your soft bodied friends!"

She glanced up. "And I shall begin with that cripple waiting outside the door!"

"Are (tires), are you intentionally trying to convince me to kill you?" I gasped. "Because it's working."

"Oh please. I can snap your neck like a twig."

She let go of me. "Say goodbye to your friend."

"Bye mom," I whispered sadly.

She froze, gawking at me open mouthed, as if unnerved by my fearing for the wrong individual's life.

But then she snorted, telegraphing `Nice try' as she climbed off me.

Alarm Bells sounded as the plant's fire detection system picked up the acrid smoke of the burning socmavaj eggs. Fire sprinklers rained down upon the blaze. If any of the eggs survived, I resolved to name three of them Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Events after this incident happened very fast.

As mother charged, Brice armed several of his explosives, mouthing the words, "C'mon, you cranky whore, come to papa."

I ran after my mom, still uncertain whether I should help Brice kill her, or make one last desperate attempt to save her life, and her soul.

Brice knew he wouldn't make it. I could tell by the way he held that detonator, and kissed something like a rosary with a Star of David hanging from it.

When I drew closer, he gave me a military salute.

This was it, then, I thought. We were both going to die, so that everyone else on the base could live. An honorable tribute to my Lord.

Brice's sudden showing of faith confused and troubled me, but I resolved to question him about it later, if and when we had time.

If neither of us survived, I'd get the answer soon enough from the mouth of that all powerful Ss'sik'chtokiwij with a shell glistening with the radiance of jasper, carnelian and emeralds that awaited me in the hunting fields above. And what a talk we would have!

When mother neared Brice, I leapt on her back, to buy the man more time.

Brice's explosives had all been cleverly affixed to sharp objects. As mom clawed me and attempted to throw me off, he stabbed one into her chest.

Mom shrieked in outrage, clamping her claws around his neck. She whirled him toward the nest.

Brice made use of this attack, ramming home another of his homemade explosives.

She snapped at him with her suaakudsi, but he turned his head.

Before Brice could plug in another bomb, Mother shoved a claw through his chest, ripping out his beating heart.

He already knew he was dying, even before this. With a broken rib cage and ruptured lung, his breathing passages had been filling with fluid, and he continually spat up blood.

Now, as he looked up at me, he had this apologetic look on his face, as if he wanted to tell me, `Sorry I was such a hard ass.'

His thumb depressed the detonator button at the same time mom tore his heart free from its arterial connections.

A blast dramatic in its size and intensity. An entire section of flooring gave way beneath us.

The door to the plant, and its entire steel frame collapsed with thunderous noise.

If an explosion can do that much to inanimate objects, you can imagine what it did to everything else.

My soft bodied friend got reduced to a red and black piece of meat, barely recognizable as a human being.

Mother, despite her hardy constitution and strong, seemingly impregnable armor, ended up hollowed out to an empty husk, like one of those cicada shells that cling to the sides of trees.

The rails broke away, tumbling into the lava.

I, of course, could hardly escape unscathed.

I felt a sense of weightlessness as the world filled with blinding light. I soared.

My back landed on something, and every inch of my body erupted in agonizing pain.

I lay sprawled on a pile of broken concrete, half buried in rubble.

And then...I drifted, my body strangely light.

Whole.

Uninjured.

I felt like a perfect specimen of a healthy Ss'sik'chtokiwij.

I floated high above the debris, gazing down at my badly damaged unmoving body. It didn't breathe anymore.

Dead, I had to be dead.

A kind voice called for me. I turned and found myself being drawn into something like a sun.

I frantically clawed at anything I could reach, attempting to escape the thing's gravitational pull, but my digits only passed through objects, and I got slowly dragged away into this glowing abyss.

I surrendered, allowing the strange force to take me where it willed.

The great Ss'sik'chtokiwij! I thought. He's calling me to His presence!

I had longed for this moment, and the day had finally arrived.

The thing I desired above all else.

The thing I feared beyond all other fears.

I was going home.