“Agra!” Taylor called elsewhere in the wreck. Listening with dismay as his voice echoed back to him Taylor proceeded down an empty corridor. Stumbling down the darkened tunnel in the soft green glow provide by his survival suit he paused at every intersection or ramp looking for signs of recent movement. Somehow Agra and Quintek had gotten ahead of him. By chance he eventually came upon a snow filled opening full of three toed tracks. Agra and Quintek had been through here. It looked to him like they had come and gone recently.

  “Agra” Taylor cried hoarsely. Shivering as he watched his vaporous breath drift away Taylor called again adding, “I just want to talk.” No response. Pausing with a frown Taylor kicked at the snow and looked skyward for answers.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” he sighed in defeat. He hung his head in frustration and noticed the pair of small metal plates sticking out of the snow. One had been uncovered and was surrounded by tracks while the other remained mostly untouched and buried. Taylor approached the gravesites slowly and with respect. The wind howled above him as he read the name scratched into the first crude grave marker.

  Greg Anson

  Father

  Taylor stared at the word with confusion. Why would Agra bury her father if she had betrayed him to the Syn? Confused he then turned his attention to the other marker. Who else had she buried here? Bending down Taylor wiped and scooped away the snow to reveal a more complex message scratched into the oxidized metal surface.

  Teacher

  May you finally know peace

  “Teacher?” Taylor wondered aloud. Was this the other Syn, the one who had taught Agra the sacred tongue? Did she kill him too?” Taylor stood up, following the three toed tracks as they ascended into a nearby tunnel in the wreck.

  “Agra where are you!” he called. Only the howling wind answered. Undeterred he continued his pursuit. Eventually he could go no further. The only place to go was up. Here the wreckage had pancaked, collapsed floors forming one continuous ramp up into darkness. Water trickled down from steaming vents. Three toed prints glistened in the pale green light of his survival suit. This is where Agra had gone. He was certain of it.

  “Agra,” he called. Again he heard no answer. He began the climb. Somewhere halfway up the ramp is where Taylor heard the muffled clicking of the sacred tongue. He listened, certain that Quintek was the one speaking. It sounded as though he was the only one talking. Agra remained silent, listening to whatever the Syn was saying. A chill ran down his spine as did the inclination to turn back. Taylor decided to venture up into a jagged hole in the sloping wall alone. He found himself in a dim starlit atrium. The intricate red and silver mosaics caught his attention, but Agra was his immediate focus.

  “Agra I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Taylor exclaimed flustered.

  Agra didn’t even look up from where she was sitting on a black throne half buried in the snow scattered across the floor. She seemed lost in thought. Quintek stopped talking to glare at Taylor. He didn’t stop Taylor from racing across the room to confront Agra.

  “Agra what are you doing?” Taylor asked desperately as he knelt down to address her, “Why didn’t you stay? Why did you run?”

  Agra said nothing, choosing to look away.

  “I know you didn’t betray your father,” Taylor said trying to reassure her, “You couldn’t have.”

  Quintek’s gaze shifted between Taylor and Agra. She shook her head.

  “But I did,” Agra lamented. Taylor frowned in dismay.

  “No, I don’t believe it. Please tell me what happened. You don’t have to lie to me.” Taylor insisted. Agra sighed.

  “I was the only one who could gather wood in the winter. That is when I stumbled upon this place and learned what my father had been hiding from me. He didn’t want me to learn the truth,” Agra recounted with a blank emotionless expression.

  “What truth?” Taylor asked.

  “That there was another survivor besides me in the wreck. Another of my kind had survived. I don’t know how long my father kept this secret from me, but I hated him from the moment I found out. After that I sought out my teacher during my wood gathering expeditions. He taught me about our kind, taught me the sacred tongue,” Agra said warmly. Her mood shifted suddenly.

  “Eventually I abandoned my father in favor of my teacher and became convinced that I needed to avenge my mother and her people. I was told to kill my father and I did.”

  “It can’t be that simple,” Taylor said crouching beside Agra.

  Agra sheepishly kneaded a ball of snow with trembling hands.

  “No,” she said. “When I found him, he was already dying.”

  “Agra?”

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  “Father”

  Greg Anson watched his daughter emerge from the shadows with sunken half shut eyes. Sweat dripped down his gaunt feverish face. His brown beard showed wisps of premature gray. He managed a weak smile, choking on a bloody cough. Agra loomed above the foot of his death bed with a look of confused disappointment. The man she saw didn’t at all resemble the one she had abandoned years before.

  “You still call me father?” Greg said proudly. He looked up at Agra with a pained expression. Bedridden and weak it to great effort for her father to maintain his crooked smile. He lowered his voice.

  “Have you come to kill me?” he asked. “For Him?”

  Agra gave him a predatory look, glaring at him with her malevolent amber eyes. Her oval beaky face quivered with discomfort as she fidgeted with her clawed hands. Greg accepted this confirmation with a comforted sigh. He closed his eyes and sank into his bedding with a relaxed expression. Agra crept closer.

  “You must hate me,” Greg offered causally. “I don’t blame you.”

  “You lied to me,” Agra hissed.

  Greg frowned, coughing hoarsely as blood pooled at the side of his chapped lips.

  “I should have known that you’d be curious, that I couldn’t keep you away from him forever. How could I not expect you to find him eventually? He is your kind, and you have every right to want to meet him. I should have told you.”

  “You should have told me what really happened here,” Agra said sharply. “Your kind started the battle that killed my people, my mother, and stranded us alone on this planet.”

  The accusation seemed to hurt just as much as the pain. Greg gasped and looked up at Agra with teary eyed regret.

  “I know Agra,” he sobbed. “I know. We encountered an unknown Syn ship in space and decided to shoot first and ask questions later. We should have just reported the sighting and fled, but we were on the warpath. You have every right to be angry. You are here because of me. Trust me I know.”

  “Then what was I to you? Am I some half-hearted attempt to sate your guilty conscience?”

  Gasping, Greg Anson reached out with a shaking hand.

  “You were the light of my life Agra, my daughter all these years. I’m proud of you. Nothing will ever change that.” Greg stressed holding off another cough. Agra blinked confusion and despair. She drifted closer, close enough for her father to grab her outstretched hand.

  “Agra,” he stammered, “killing me doesn’t mean you’ve made the choice to reject your humanity and side with your kind. You are just ending the suffering of an old fool who should have died long ago. You still have time to choose who you are, not what I or the other Syn survivor thinks you should be. Don’t forget that.”

  As Greg’s voice trailed off Agra ended his life with a quick slash of his neck. It was just too painful to listen to him any longer. Her Father accepted his fate without a struggle. Her father sputtered his last few words as blood pooled in the bed of parachute cloth and red feathery down she had made for him

  “Thank you,” he mouthed as his flesh went pale and his eyes glazed over. Trembling Agra clutched her head and collapsed to his bedside screaming.

  “I’m so sorry father!” she said pounding the bedding as she pressed her head against his limp hand with a hissing sob. “I’m so sorry.”

  In a dazed stupor Agra carried her fathers’ body across kilometers of blinding snow to show her teacher that she had done what he had asked. He was waiting for her deep within the steamy darkened bowels of the wreckage she had discovered years before. Her teacher waited beside the towering image of her mother, something he looked at every day. Like her father her teacher clung to images and recordings of the world he had lost. She bowed, hiding her uncharacteristic apprehension. Her teacher spoke with a subtle clicking tongue, the sacred language he had taught her truly divine in his beaked mouth. Agra unveiled her work and bowed.

  “You have done well child,” he clicked with utmost satisfaction. Her teacher had never acknowledged her name, preferring to address her by the moniker he had chosen for her. He had given himself the title Teacher and nothing more. Greg Anson, his body lying limp at their feet, had always been the enemy in the sacred tongue her Teacher had taught her.

  “I did what you asked. What is it you have been waiting to tell me?” Agra demanded with spite. Her teacher cocked his head. His tired red eyes shone with worry. Both Syn had noticed each other acting differently. He clicked his claws together nervously.

  “That I’ve truly come to accept and appreciate your presence,” her teacher said shivering. “What I have to do is beyond me. I failed my Queen. I must not fail my people.” He jumped at her. Agra caught her teacher reflexively, grabbing his clawed hands as he threw himself at her in a desperate attempt to catch her off guard. They both fell to the floor.

  “You are a cursed child born of disaster,” Her teacher exclaimed in a wild frenzy. “The edicts are clear. Your corruption should not have been allowed to mature I should not have let my selfish loneliness cloud my judgment and stall my task. The enemy is dead and killing you is the last step in my redemption.”

  “Teacher please!” Agra pleaded, but her teacher was inconsolable.

  “Please go quietly child, allow me to correct my failures,” her teacher cried. Agra head butted him kicking her dazed teacher away and jumping to her feet. He was not backing down. Her teacher seemed possessed. “If you care about our people then you must let me do this before it’s too late. You are ruin.”

  “Teacher,” Agra whimpered. Sensing she had no choice Agra closed her clawed hands into a single sharpened point and lashed out when her teacher made his second attack. It was over in an instant. The weak old Syn gurgled something, his red eyes half shut and unfocused as blue blood dribbled down his segmented torso. Pushing himself off her clawed hand her teacher quickly fell limp on the ground. She collapsed beside him as he choked and gargled.

  “Teacher why did you do make me do this?” she exclaimed again as she crawled to his side. He looked up at her with trembling fear.

  “I knew I could not hope to stop what has already begun. At least promise me your divine wrath will be just,” he coughed cryptically. Her teacher avoided her devastated gaze and looked to the holographic projection of his late queen with dismay. “Now I will join her amongst the stars.”

  “Please teacher don’t leave me too.”

  “You always reminded me of her,” was all he said with his last croaking exhalation. Agra cradled his limp head desperately, still stained with the red and blue blood of her fallen fathers. Agra raised her head and cried out in agony. Her mournful cry echoed even through the last soundless hologram her teacher had secretly recorded.

  Jakob and Liz watched the recording end and dissolve away in shocked silence. Liz had reactivated the holographic projector hoping to find out what had happened after her betrayal of Anson to the mysterious Syn. What they found left them with more questions than answers

  “Was Taylor, right?” Jakob asked.

  “I don’t know,” Liz said conjuring a frame of the hologram back into the air. She had become quite good with the alien device after hours of trial and error. “She killed Greg Anson and that Syn.”

  “Agra must have gone nuts,” Jakob said. A shrieking sound from the hall abruptly ended the discussion, replacing confusion with dread.

  “The Syn,” Liz said wide eyed and defenseless. She grabbed for the metal pole she had used to threaten Agra and ran back towards Jakob.

  “Don’t worry I can move,” Jakob groaned. The irony was not lost on him. Without Quintek, another Syn, he would not have been in any shape to escape with Liz.

  “We need to find Taylor, Agra, and Quintek.”

  “Quite yapping and run,” Jakob snapped as Liz helped him stumble down the ramp. “Where the hell are they?” he exclaimed, hoping that owing his life to a Syn was the worst thing he had to worry about.