Eighth chapter

Flying was freeing.  Similar to the feelings you had growing up of getting a bicycle, your first car, your first place away from home.  All moments of freedom.  Flying put all of those to shame.  The rough terrain of the mountains flew by faster than most cars could drive.  Sam figured he was going somewhere between 120 and 150 miles per hour.  But he was also trying to see what he could do.  He was testing limits and seeing what he could handle.

He flew into a valley and saw a flock of birds take off from the trees.  Curious, he slowed down to see what had caused the movement.  There between the trees he could see trucks moving along a snowy path.  It couldn't have been more than a logging trail but there were large trucks moving down it.  Sam could see the trail through the trees and followed where it was going.  It ended at a clearing about a mile farther down so he found a sturdy tree that covered from the ground but gave him a good view of what was going on in the clearing.

They must have been tumbling along a lot slower than he thought because it took them almost an hour to get to the clearing.  As they filtered into the clearing, Sam counted five vehicles, all military grade and very heavy.  Four of the vehicles made a perimeter around the clearing and the last, which looked like it had a spare tire on, and would explain the delay, went right to the center of the clearing.  Once it was parked, dozens of personnel filtered out of the vehicles.  They combed the area, searching for something, but finding nothing they returned to the clearing as a lone person climbed up to the top of the center truck.  It was a nondescript girl with a laptop bag at her side and black hair.  None of the military men looked at her.  They just scanned the trees while she sat down.  Sam thought he could hear her chanting something but he wasn’t too sure and couldn’t make out any words at this distance.  Finally he felt a tingly wave go through him and all of the men filtered back into the vehicles.  There were no windows on the trucks so he was very curious as to what was going on.

Sam jumped out of the tree and glided through the last few trees between him and the clearing.  There weren’t many but his wingspan made him dodge from side to side to avoid them.  His landing was most impressive and made no sound as he walked barefoot through the snow up to the truck.  The ladder gave him some trouble since it was his first chance to climb up round ladder rungs since changing but he managed it and stood on top of the truck.  The girl was facing the opposite direction with headphones in and was typing something on the laptop she had pulled out.  Sam sat sideways behind her and watched for a few minutes.  He read what was on the screen and giggled to himself since it was a Pokémon fiction she was writing.  He gently pulled out one of her ear buds.

“Hey, what you up to?”

She didn’t turn to acknowledge his presence at all, “just working on my stories.  Terry says I’m allowed to once I’ve established a perimeter. Everyone is in the trucks waiting for my signal.”

“Oh yeah?  How do you signal them?”

She pointed with one hand at a watch on her other wrist, “I just tap this and everyone will come out.  For now I’m just waiting for someone to break the perimeter that isn’t a critter or deer.”

“Sounds boring.  So why Pokémon fiction?”

“Oh.  It’s a silly passion of mine.  My coworkers think I should give it up but I can’t help myself.”

“Passions, no matter how silly, still drive the heart.”

“They do.”  She looked wistfully up to the sky and smiled.  Sam figured she must be remembering something.  Sam was about to ask but her face suddenly turned to a frown.  Sam raised an eyebrow and she finally looked back at him.  She seemed to pale further than she already was.  She pointed at him and said a word he did not understand before another tingly wave went over his body.  It was strange and he realized what he was seeing was some kind of magic.

“Was that magic? That’s so cool! What was that one supposed to do?”

“What?  That was—… you’re not—… how?”  Sam could see she was about to freak out.  Not that it had happened to him before but he felt like it was something he may have to get used to.  The scream that the girl suddenly let out was not something he could get used to though.  It was piercing and loud and he could feel the magical power behind it as well, amplifying it and adding a component to it he couldn’t feel aside from the tingling.  

He had his ears covered and folded back the whole time she screamed which was way longer than any human should have been able to.  When she finally stopped she looked ready to pass out but Sam saw the military guys filing out of the trucks with weapons drawn.  Things were getting real and Sam had nowhere to go.  Trying to fly away would just get them to open fire on him and that would likely end badly.  They surrounded the truck and pointed their guns at him.  The slow clap Sam heard was not what he was expecting though.

Around the corner stepped the same guy from the hospital except this time his clothes weren’t in disarray.  “Well well!  What do we have here?  You look new.”

“Hey I remember you!  You tried to keep me at the hospital a few days ago!”

“I— what?”

Sam heard a chattering and looked over at a guy shaking.  He seemed to be muttering something and was very nervous, “vey—Vey’Ral! It’s a Vey’Ral! It needs to die!”

The man next to the guy shaking reached up to pull the guy’s gun down but he pulled the trigger as the gun was moving.  Sam reacted fast and moved in front of the girl who was standing albeit shakily.  He felt the bullets go into his leg at an angle.  They didn’t hit anything vital but god did it hurt!  The rest of the guards got nervous too as Sam grabbed the girl and jumped off the truck, several opening fire on him.  He flew between the trucks and into the trees to get away. A few bullets grazed him in the process but nothing hit like that first volley did.

He didn’t want to go far with the girl.  He figured they would be looking a good distance away from camp to find him wounded so he actually went up into the tree he watched the camp from, hopping up from the base and onto his perch sixty feet up.  The girl he set on the branch and leaned against the trunk while he sat a little farther out to look at her.  He checked to make sure she didn’t have any injuries since there were a lot of bullets flying.  Nothing obvious at least, but he wasn’t a medic.

He heard and watched the units jogging along the ground under the tree and hoped the girl wouldn’t scream again.  She watched him carefully and they both stayed silent until the units were out of earshot.  Sam hoped none of them had good hearing, “are you alright?  That was a lot of bullets flying.”

“I—I think so.  Sorry about that.  I thought you were a spirit at first but panicked once I realized you weren’t.  Are you alright?”

“My leg hurts where I got shot and I have a few spots I got grazed but otherwise I feel fine.”

“Wait, you got shot?  You have bullet wounds?  How are you not keeling over right now?”

“Hell if I know. I mean, it stings but other than that no real problems.  Could you take a look?  I got hit three or four times.”

Sam lifted her skirt to show the side and back of her leg to the girl.  She gasped at the sight and started poking at his leg.  That was when Sam felt the sensation like popping a big blackhead, “oh my goodness!  The bullets barely went in!  It’s like you have built in bullet proof armor!  A quick squeeze and they popped right out with only a small hole.  God you could be dangerous in a fight if you wanted to be.”

“That’s kind of cool but felt gross.  I’m not dangerous I hope you know.  Generally mild mannered and an off color sense of humor but not dangerous.”

“That’s good.  I’m sorry I screamed.  It was a knee jerk reaction.  You didn’t seem bothered by it other than the normal reaction to a woman’s scream though.”

“Don’t get me wrong, it hurt like hell!  But no, nothing extraordinary aside from piercing volume.  How did you do it for so long anyways?”

“Oh, that was a spell picked up from some aliens.  The originators I can’t remember but it’s been around since way before humans had a civilization.  Said to be from one of the first civilizations.  And boy were they powerful!”

“Sounds interesting.  So what now?”

“Well, we probably go back to camp and we wait for Terry and then we can qualify you and such.  Maybe do something about those bullet holes in your leg.”

A voice below them got their attention with a start, “yes, come down so we can talk and get this whole mess sorted out.”

They both looked down to see the agent from the hospital, Terry it seemed, waiting for them.  Sam just shrugged and started hopping from branch to branch to get down.  The girl squeaked when she was left behind but Sam was on the ground before she actually started moving.  Terry looked back up and shook his head as the girl started to slowly pick her way down the tree, “come on.  It will be a while before she is down.  Sam was it?  You sure changed a lot more than I was expecting.  I’ve never seen anything like you before.”

“Greaaaaat. Not only am I an alien, I’m an unknown alien.  This just keeps getting better and better.”

“I didn’t say unknown.  Just that I’d never seen one before.  We have a system that will read your dna and from there we will know what you are.”

“Well that sounds interesting.  I take it you brought this all with you?”

“Of course.  It’s a simple computer and scanner.  We update the system every few weeks with the main branch off planet.  We should know what you are.”

Sam followed silently from here.  This was actually a big point for him since he really wanted to know what he was.   It was scary at the same time though.  It would confirm that he was indeed no longer human.  He still held onto a small shred of hope that he could be changed back.  His blood was orange now though so that hope had shrunk quite a bit.

They walked back into the camp and Terry pulled open a compartment on the side of the center vehicle.  Inside looked like a regular computer with a barcode scanner attached. Nothing elaborate and actually quite boring to Sam.  The computer was already on so Terry pulled over the scanner and paused as he looked at Sam.

“Ok this is the difficult part.  Well, difficult because of you.  I need skin and all I see is fur.  Is there anywhere not covered in fur?”

“Umm, well I only know two spots.  My palm and my foot.  Nothing else I can see at least.”

“Ahh.  Not conventional but it works.  Let me see your hand.”

Sam held his hand out and Terry pressed the scanner to his palm for a few seconds.  It felt warm to Sam but otherwise had no sensation.  Terry looked questioningly at him but looked at the screen when it immediately popped up with results.

“That was fast.  Wait, classified?  That doesn’t sound right.  I should have clearance to just about everything in this organization.  Let me look into this.”  He started clicking things and going through pages to see information. He didn’t want to leave the air silent while he looked though, “I’m surprised you didn’t flinch from the scanner. Usually everyone tells me it’s hot or burns.”

“Well it felt a little warm but nothing spectacular.  Things that used to burn me haven’t felt even warm any more.”

“Fascinating.  Ok so here we go… wow.  So you know how humans have a double helix DNA and 23 chromosome pairs?  Well you have an octo helix DNA strand that is also four times longer than a humans and your chromosomes are in sets of six and the strands are 115 long.  There are only two races known with that.  Drakorna and Ren’Dal.  You are not either though and the Ren’Dal have been extinct for close to 8,000 years. So I have no idea why this would be classified.  Something about ‘The Lost’ initiative.”

“Well what do the two with similar DNA look like?  Maybe I’m a love child between the two.  Somehow.”

The agent pulled up the images and sure enough, Sam could have been a love child between them but with the one being extinct for so many years, it was unlikely.  There was more though, “oh.  Okay well love child between the two is impossible anyways.  Drakorna do not have sexual organs.  They reproduce some other way.  How, we do not know, but they do.  At least the two races are from the same planet.  That planet is old and has three of the most… okay had three of the most powerful races in existence.  Two still exist but the Drakorna no longer are active in the universe and Ren’Indral are currently and always have been the most technologically advanced of all of the races.  They also do not like visitors and have been known to shoot down ships without prior clearance.”

“Wow. They sound pretty vicious.  I hope I don’t meet them.”

“So yeah. I can’t tell you anything more. I need to speak with my superiors about this.  They should know what to do.”

Terry walked off right as the girl was walking back into camp.  She had a few scrapes and twigs in her hair. She apparently didn’t fare well getting out of that tree by herself.  Sam felt apologetic for not bringing her down with him.

“Sorry. I should have jumped down with you.  I didn’t think about it.”

“That’s fine.  I haven’t climbed a tree in years.  It was a little scary but I got a kick out of it once I got back on the ground.”

“Are you alright? You look a bit scuffed up and I smell blood.”

“Oh don’t worry. I’m fine. Just a few scrapes.  I’m Ananda by the way.”

She held out her hand for Sam to take.  He shook it carefully since he also noticed the scrapes on her palms.  He really couldn’t help feeling bad now.

“I’m Samuel.  So could you tell me more about magic?  I’ve always wondered if it was real.”

“Samuel? But you’re a girl?  Who got crazy with the baby names?”  

“Ugh.  Here.”  Sam pulled out his wallet from his pack and opened it to his ID.  “This is what I used to look like.  I was a big heavy man.  Not a slight girl.”

“Oh. Oh my.  That must be confusing and annoying.”

“You’re telling me.  So can you tell me anything about magic or is it like fight club?”

Ananda has a good laugh at the reference, “no, no.  Not like fight club.  I can talk about it.  It’s actually an extension of Chi. Or Qi, or Spirit.  Depending on the religion.  Humans aren’t very good at harnessing it but most races use it often and produce large amounts of it.  We could do a test later to see how much you produce if you’d like.”

“That’d be neat, actually.  Wouldn’t have thought it was measurable.  Humans barely believe in it.  Those of us with martial arts backgrounds at least have a respect for it.”

“You have martial arts training?  Oooh, be careful.  If you put enough force into a blow you could probably kill someone.  Focusing Chi into a blow is very dangerous and devastating for those with large amounts of it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.  So basically my Chi could be focused into spells and such to cause different effects?”

“Correct.  Most races can’t focus Chi outside of their bodies but races like mine are experts at it and spend most of our lives training the ability.”

“Huh.  Wonder if I can.  Apparently my race is classified so even Terry doesn’t and can’t know.  Eh, it was interesting enough to see some of the details though.”

Before Ananda could respond, Sam jerked his head to the side.  He heard a gun cocking and was very much concerned with this sound.  He motioned to Ananda to stay quiet as he walked away from her and slightly towards the sound.  As soon as his sight lined up and he saw the gun, the guy rounded the tree and opened fire.  The first couple hit and Sam felt the burn before taking off at a run.  He ran into the trees, feeling a few more hit before he got to the cover of the trees.  He kept up a good speed dodging closer to the guy who was shooting at him.  The guy ran out of ammo and Sam made a beeline for him to disarm him.  The guy looked up in time to see Sam leaping onto him from 20 feet away but brought up a small gun before Sam reached him.  The shot from the gun sent shockwaves into his body and flung him up through the trees.  The pain was unbearable and it felt like the blast, which hit him square in the chest, crushed his rib cage.  He went above the trees a ways but couldn’t focus to bring his wings around and glide down, and wound up falling from 150 feet in the air onto one of the trucks.  He left a huge dent in the truck where he landed and everything hurt.  Off in the distance he could hear more militia coming back to camp now that they heard gunfire but his consciousness was slipping away.  Before he completely slipped away, he heard Terry shouting a name with the most threatening tone he’d ever heard: “Illren”.