I don’t actually remember how I got here.

  I’m in… I think it’s a bedroom? Well I don’t know what else I’d call it to be honest. It’s small and there’s really nothing going on except for a strip of warm yellowish light at the top, a small cabinet on the opposite end of a metal door that probably slides open with a fsshhh, and the overly soft bed I’m lying on.

  I take in a deep breath and the air smells sweet, but a bit stale underneath it. Like… I don’t know actually, how am I doing this in the first place? I’ve gotten used to not thinking about it and there really wasn’t much time to do it earlier but I can smell again, and I really should be freaking out more about it now but, oh God if that’s real then everything else was right?

  Where do I start? I’m no-I know I’ll have to go back in there but someone’s got to tell Aliyah’s family that she- no, she could still be alive, she has to be, God please. And my family needs to know that I-FUCK, what do I even say to them about all this? That I’m what? Going to conquer the entire planet and fight giants from other star systems for a living?

  I need to take it one step of a time, one step at a… yeah this could just be a trick right? Another way for Typh-Ea to brea- No. There’s this sense of heft to everything that I didn’t know I could miss back when I was still in there. Gravity, it’s actual real gravity, I’m being pulled down even when I stop thinking about being pulled down or start thinking about being pulled up instead.

  So; I’m somewhere real, and whoever put me in here also made sure to… I think they didn’t bathe me for whatever reason but they put on an orange shirt with yellow palm tree motifs, a hawaiian shirt out of all things, and blue jeans a few sizes too big for me, I look like someone’s gross aunt, fuck. The cloth does feel good on my skin though, it’s shockingly well made.

  I glance around to find any obvious cameras before I slide out of the bed, fumble on a pair of sandals they left behind for me, and I am suddenly struck by the sight of myself in the mirrored door. The golden circlet is still on my head, now proudly bearing two curved horns that I’m sure weren’t that long when I put it on to begin with. I move a hand up to take it off and it feels like trying to tear off a piece of skin, shit. I’ve gotta get that checked later, leaving it on all the time can’t be good for me.

  I walk up to the door, and struggle and fail to push it open and a bit of panic seeps back in because I’m trapped aren’t I? I got abducted against my will and taken away to God knows where by unseen but probably criminal hands who want to sell me off into slavery or force me to do their bidding or tear out the secrets of how to ‘wield’ Typh-Ea out of me and there’s noth-

  Oh there’s a weird latch down there, I just have to click it open and-huh.

  I’m staring out at a much larger room, it looks kind of like a lounge? Decorated by twinkling, clinking glass decor and weird sculptures surrounding a long sofa that wraps around a central pit. I can see a few other doors in the view across me, and also people of course, familiar people thankfully. Their outfits and style are different, Ms Tzeitman in some sort of loose white blouse and light green pants, and that professor from earlier, Cynthia I think? She’s wearing surprisingly rough looking blue coveralls with brown gloved hands and a sturdy looking hat set aside on a nearby table, but I remember their faces and voices clearly enough.

  They’re both seated on the couch, and I overhear a glimpse of whatever their conversation was before I caught their attention; Cynthia was talking about a worksite and needing to call up more people to sort through the ruins as quickly as possible, while there’s still time to find more of something, I don’t get to find out what that something is though because Ms Tzeitman cuts her off with a wave:

  “Oh uhh-are you sure you should be walking already?”

  It comes off as being… awkwardly casual? I guess there’s nothing not awkward about me being here, huh? Wherever this is, and Cynthia does just sorta stare at me when she turns around a bit to face me. I don’t really know what to say really.

  “How are you holding up? Any pain or discomfort or anything?” Cynthia offers, looking up and down my body in a failed attempt to try and not stare at my horns.

  I shake my head, hand moving up to scratch a slight itch at the base of the circlet, “No but where is this? Who are the two of you exactly?”

  Cynthia’s expression shifts, I guess she’s thinking about it? “Oh, di-do you remember anything about the exhibit? Anything at all before the… attack?”

  I squint at her, “No that’s not what I… you all must have known about all of this before didn’t you? About the empire straddling the galaxy, and the sleeping giant lurking beneath the dunes waiting for some fool to embrace her power so she ca-”

  I am very suddenly cut off by Ms Tzeitman clapping her hands together and saying, “Holly, Holly, that’s your name isn’t it? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Wh-huh?”

  She holds her face in her hands for a bit, before she makes a show of rubbing her temples, “I have a headache Ms Holly, a hundred meter tall headache bearing a face I put my name and artistic reputation on all over the, the news, the social media, the adverts, you understand right?”

  I don’t, but she does not give me the time to really reply as she drowns out anything I could say with, “This headache I have has turned a exhibition I’ve planned for months into a slaughterhouse, and oh so many people than I would have ever wanted are dead or missing and I need you to understand that I spent a lot of money on making that number zero Ms Holly, zero.”

  Cynthia squirms a little in her seat as Ms Tzeitman continues on, “I have hired men for fire, men for people getting lost in the hills, men for fights and flus, but I do not have men for mechanical abominations strafing people from the skies Ms Holly, and you are, you are very lucky that the men I hired for earthquakes did their job when their world was burning, because that headache turned the ground into liquid when it flew out to, to fucking kick another giant man across th-.”

  She lets out a pained sigh, “Do not give me another headache Ms Holly, none of us know what is going on, no one except for you, so please, sit down, take a deep breath and fucking relax okay? You are in my yacht, it is a big, beautiful ship I had to bring all the way over frI-it’s not important, just, sit down Ms Holly.”

  She’s taking a deep breath herself, and a phone on the table starts buzzing and she makes a few movements near it that shuts it off completely, and the silence lingers until I speak.

  “A-okay? I’m.”

  I awkwardly shuffle into the room, brushing past and mumbling an apology to a suited woman I hadn’t notice before that had apparently been standing guard I suppose near the door to my room, and I take a seat somewhere I could face I guess all three of them and… there’s a weird thought that comes into my mind, neither of these two look like real fighters, I think I could just kill that guard and take the more expensive one hostage to make my escape and… fuck, that means she’s watching again isn’t she?

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  “Sorry, I think what Ms Tzeitman is trying to say is that we’re all tense here. Things have been a bit hectic since you disappeared and I know you must still be processing uh, things yourself but it’d really help if you could answer a few questions for us since you came out of that thing, no uh, pressure though, we’re not cops or anything,” Cynthia offered, stepping in between the two of us. Ms Tzeitman nods a little.

  “Okay, okay, I think I can do that, but I have to ask i-”

  Ms Tzeitman waves her hand and cuts me off again with, “We don’t have your phone or any other belongings, and we haven’t identified all of the dead yet, or found your friend anywhere if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  My expression hardens as I reply with, “Okay? Thank you but can you just let me speak?” Neither of them reply, and I take that as an opportunity to continue with, “So it’s, it’s possible that she’s still alive right?”

  Cynthia looks a little at Ms Tzeitman before she replies with, “Well it’s possible but… we’re counting her as missing for now, we don’t have the clearance to track her phone or other location tagged belongings of her yet, and that’s uh, assuming any of them still work to begin with but! If any of her accounts starts posting we’ll know, and we do still have people searching.”

  Ms Tzeitman adds, “A lot of people, very expensive people working day and night like a dog, heh, whatever that means. Oh fuck sorry, not the time.”

  I give her a weird look, and let out a little half sigh of relief even as a foreign part of my brain makes me think about how weirdly awkward she can be for someone in her high position, is that really the best this planet has to offer for leadership? Maybe I should kill her and conquer this ‘Dilmun Concern’ of her’s, install a puppet ‘CEO’ and reduce it to a tributary maybe.

  “Uh, anyway we wanted to ask… well we have a lot of questions actually but I think the most important question is just, were you alone in there? Can w-” she coughs, there’s a glass of water on the table she moves for, “Can we expect anymore survivors to come out of wherever you went during the battle?” Cynthia offers, trying to get us back on track after I stared off at Ms Tzeitman for a bit too long.

  I think for a bit, but shake my head, “No it was just me and… I don’t know how to describe it-,” I am suddenly reminded of the taste of my own blood “I mean her, I mean her.”

  Ms Tzeitman is staring back at me now, and I can’t help avoiding making eye contact with her again even as she speaks, “Okay, so tell us about ‘her’, you mean the… mecha right? I don’t know what else I would call it other than… automaton? No that’s too gauche, who the fuck hasn’t heard of Gett-sorry, continue, tell me about her.”

  I open and close my mouth a few times, trying to wrap my head around and encapsulate exactly what I should get across about Typh-Ea while fully aware that she is in my head and judging me and everyone she sees at all times. I eventually settle for, “Terrifying, there’s no other word for it, what she wants from me, no from us is… if she’s telling the truth, and I just know she is then we’re all fucked, like, you don’t understand there’s got to be thousands upon thousands of those things out there and they’re all, she said that was one of the weakest she has ever fought.”

  Cynthia’s paying close attention to me, scribbling a few notes on her tablet as I speak before she replies with, “Okay so the, the alien ‘mecha’ is part of an army? Do you know what their motives are for attacking us to begin with? Was it caused by the one you, well were you in control over any of that?”

  It takes me a bit before I can answer, especially for that last part, but something about just being here feels odd, despite the AC I’m getting a bit warm and my thoughts are drifting more than I’d like, I’m trying really hard not to stare, “Could you not hear him? He said he was Duke… Jim I think, part of Baihu’s Kingdom of Air which I guess is still underneath the Kingdom of Heaven?”

  Ms Tzeitman’s eyes widen as she cuts me off with, “Wait like, fucking China?”

  Blinking a little at her, I reply with, “What? No that’s… it might be a translation thing? China was also a country back on earth right? I don’t think the Chinese have a stellar empire, I think she was just… using the closest approximation in our language or culture or whatever.”

  “Okay, yeah I’d be surprised if the TAU have already progress-,” she looks at my face and suddenly cuts herself off, “Carry on.”

  “Well he said he was here to conquer my planet and claim it as his own by defeating me b-”

  Ms Tzeitman cuts me off again with a wave of her hand and a loud, “Just full on, annexing us, no questions asked after beating you with their giant robot?”

  “Yeah, basically,” I note, reflexively stopping as she does something weird with her hand brushing against her mouth and chin.

  “That’s stupid, Centauri isn’t just going to roll over and surrender because he won one fight against an ancient hunk of junk no one outside of this room has even heard of.”

  I am staring directly into Ms Tzeitman’s forehead, glaring fiercely enough to bore into her skull, not because I really want to but because Typh-Ea is yelling at me about what a puny and crushable bug she actually is and how little barbarians like her know about the world and the way its supposed to work. “I know, but that’s just how it works, that’s just how it’s always worked in the Galaxy, ever since the Center started unifying it.”

  Cynthia looks up at me, “Just to clarify, is the Center another name for the Kingdom of Heaven or?”

  I nod at her and she writes something down and continues with, “So how did it feel to pilot the uh, ‘mecha’? That was you controlling it right? Or did the uhh, mecha just run by itself with you involved in some other way or simply absorbed into it for some other reason like as a power source or something?”

  I take a bit of time to think through that, hoping that Typh-Ea would be so kind as to fill in the holes for me, she doesn’t though, and Ms Tzeitman cuts in with a wave of her hand before I could really get a word in anyway with, “Nevermind that, if the galaxy is fucking unified already right? If there’s all of these alien spaces running around forming multistellar kingdoms underneah some grand unifying bullshit empire, which sounds stupid by the way, it’s just… ugh.”

  Amazing, every time she speaks it feels like Typh-Ea is pushing a hot knife into my mind, “if that’s even true, then how have we not known about this yet like come on? Our ancestors spent hundreds of years looking and all we got was the ruin up in Jupiter that got us all here in the first place! And I’m supposed to believe that what? We just missed all of them and they never bothered to check out Earth for the past several thousand years?”

  A very vivid mental image forms in my head of one of Typh-Ea’s fingers suddenly bursting through the ceiling and crushing the exact spot we are all standing in within the yacht, killing everyone else instantly and forcing my body to rebuild itself from a puddle of finely pressed sludge as she screams about how our broadcasting methods are slowass, unreliable, and stupid fit only for barbarian scum li-

  I’m staring at her mouth, it’s weird that I am staring at Ms Tzeitman’s mouth uhh, “I’m sorry I tried my best to figure out how to move her the way she wanted me to but it’s really hard and I’ve never had training in space or a military group or anything so I might have fucked up and taken too long when I could have beaten him back a lot earlier and she keeps telling me that and says we’re only using the stupid waves that no one bothers to check already even by her era and I just, I just don’t know any more than that okay?”

  Cynthia gives me a bit of a weird look, “She says? Is she in the room with us right now?”

  I shake my head, “No, but she can see and hear everything you do and say, I, I think she’s in my mind and has been ever since she let me inside of her cockpit.”

  Ms Tzeitman opens her mouth as if to say something only for her phone to turn back on and start properly ringing, and she dismisses us from speaking with another wave of her hand before she picks up and lets out an annoyed, “What? Nat can’t you see I’m bu-the fucking what?”

  Her eyes widen, and without having the decency to shut off the phone or mute herself she points at the bodyguard or Cynthia or me or really any of us and goes, “Hey! Hey turn on the TV! Now!”

  I turn around behind me and up above on a ceiling decorated with brilliantly shining (hopefully glass) gems and statues in the shape of planets and stars clustered into galaxies I see a segment lower down to reveal a completely normal flat screen TV that turns on to a local news channel that-wait do I kno-huh?

  A humanoid figure is standing in front of a background of pure but familiarly endless looking neon red, garbed in familiar looking militant black plated armor that infuriatingly obscures his exact outline and bodyplan and skin right up to the elaborate white and gold mask and helmet of fluted metal covering every inch of a head I can only really describe as again ‘probably humanoid’ save for the four eyes arranged on (his?) head much like a spider’s would be, a constant stream of something blue constantly flows from the bottom of the mask, Typh-Ea thinks its blood.

  The news ticker below just says exactly what I thought it would as the message repeats again, “People of Centauri, my name is Duke Jim(?), Patron God of the Planet Fleet(?) and its vassals, and loyal servant of Baihu and the Kingdom of Air, and I have arrived with my forces to challenge your indigo Imago for the right to enfold this world and its people under our protection and shining guidance!.”

  “But do not worry for your own safety, although it has been mere moments since, I have already studied my battle against her from every angle and possibility, your Imago truly cares for you it seems! A noble and laudable thing to be, perhaps if she surrendered herself to our guidance she would make for a worthy vassal, but if she would rather ride to her death we have chosen to await her here, at the very outskirts of your star system!”

  The camera shifts to reveal a glimmering sea of stars, broken up by distant planets and asteroids and the outlines of vast machines, at least three in number, perhaps not counting the one filming, along with their exact coordinates in the lower left corner.

  “Out here we can rampage to our hearts content! Free from judgement! Free from the risk of harming even a single one of your people’s lives! Come! Come Indigo Warrior! Come and face your death like the true wielder you claim to be fuahahahaha!”

  The clip is cut, and an unimpressed looking balding man in a reclaimer general/admiral (i can never really tell) uniform is shown on screen, apparently he’s being interviewed? He starts to speak, something about how the fleet had detected something massive plowing straight into and out of our atmosphere a mere 17 hours ago, but that he isn’t scared of what is obviously a dirty Earth scum TAU fascistic provocation, the forces of R.O.M.E. are more than capable of holding up their side of the bargain with the Gang of Four and the Governate by protecting Alph-the screen is cut and reels itself back up into the ceiling, and Ms Tzeitman lets out a deep sigh.

  “What happens when they fly into the obvious trap and get themselves and everyone aboard those expensive ships Janey from Allbetter convinced that stupid governor and me to chip in for killed?”

  I blink, and try to keep my eyes on her eyes again, “They’ll carry away everyone they can find as slaves after killing almost everyone else.”

  “Oh Godsdamnit.”