“No, I didn’t say ‘it’s a boy!’ when Child Alpha was born. *The crowd laughs* That would be ridiculous, we all knew the sex of the child months before; that was part of the reason why it was such a triumphant victory. In less than five years, we have gone from undergoing first contact with the Cambiar, to producing the first Cambiar offspring with partially inherited genetic material from a human mate, to a fertile, healthy human child born from an Cambiar mother. That wasn’t to say it was easy by any means, I think our many sleepless nights can testify to that. Of course, the process was helped by the whole ‘adaptable genes’ things on our four-legged friends’ part, but I won’t let that get in the way of a bit of celebration. *The crowd laughs again* Cheers everyone! Have fun, but not too much fun. Unless…” – Dr Jacob Galloway, Head of the Interspecies Offspring Project (IOP), 2262. Transcript of the celebratory speech following the success of the IOP’s Child Alpha Mission.

  “McNeely, freeze! Hands where I can see them!” the redheaded actress on screen said, the entire audience watching with enraptured attention.

  “Dialla! I’ve missed you, babydoll! I’m so glad to see you’re still alive.” the tall man playing the role of the charming antagonist-stroke-love interest slid a pair of sunglasses off and flashed a grin.

  The movie had reached its climax, and the entire cinema was silent, aside from Bernard’s obnoxious popcorn munching sounds. The movie had been simple but entertaining. It was an adaptation of the multi-season and beloved TV series ‘Trapped Together’, a romance-crime thriller about an immortal cop chasing down her similarly immortal ex-lover turned crime lord. The movie was severely cut down from the first two seasons, but had been surprisingly accurate given the limited run time. Elias was unashamedly loving the performances of the lead cast, who had reprised their roles after the original show finished. He considered the possibility that either the duo were on Evergreen or must be secretly immortal themselves, since they still looked as good as ever after nearly a decade of acting. Elias was a fan, needless to say.

  “Shut it, Dan. We both know the only way this ends.” Detective Reinehart said, pointing her gun towards the smug criminal mastermind.

  “Of course, my dear Dialla! You, me, us stranded beach with a sunset on the horizon, a nice glass of rosé…”

  “No! No more games!” The spunky cop pulled her gun’s trigger, eliciting a click from the empty weapon and a chuckle from the crime lord. After a moment of defeat took her, Dialla’s face was renewed with passion. “This pursuit is over! Right here, right now!”

  The detective tossed the gun to the side and tackled the man, sending the two of them out of a window and hurtling dozens of stories towards the ground and smashing into a car. After a final fight scene, cheesy epilogue and the glaring hint of a sequel, or more likely ten, the movie was finished and the group departed from the cinema. Following the swathes of other movie goers, they found themselves in an open plaza of the central district of Birkdale’s Gate.

  “I thought that was amazing!” Bernard said, miming the fight scene. “The way they kicked, and the- bam, bam bam! Oh my god, just the best.”

  “Yes, I must say, it was quite fun. That said, I do really wish they expanded more of the background lore explored in the graphic novels. Oh, and the alternate reality game on the show’s website - that is also vital to getting the real story. Did you know that series creator…” Madison began, talking at Bernard whose excited look quickly crumbled against a tide of unwanted trivia and fangirling.

  “Eh, not my circus, not my monkeys,” Kurt said. “Guns should have been more realistic. Who the hell actually dual wields guns like that? Besides, why would they even need guns if they were immortal, anyhow?”

  Kurt was forcing a scowl, but Elias knew a new fan when he saw one. Perhaps it was the way he had stared doe eyed at the screen during the finale, mouth agape and a glimmer in his eyes, that gave it away. For as serious and blunt as Kurt was, there surely had to be some room for romance and drama within that hefty heart of his. Elias made a mental reminder to get the bodyguard some merchandise from the show as a gift in the future.

  “What about you… Daksira? Did you like it?” Elias asked.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about saying his co-worker’s first name aloud again so soon. Calling her some variety of insult had become natural to him, and her name had brought on a number of strange thoughts in the past few days.

  “It was… interesting,” Chel-Lin said. “I just don’t understand a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, how could they even remotely feel that… ‘connection’, as Dan called it, between them when they also hated each other? Who could love their enemy in that way?”

  “Sometimes it’s complicated. Even if you find yourself hating someone, you might still love them a whole lot more,” Kurt said.

  “Yes, especially when you both used to be part of the same crime organisation that made the immortality drug before you lost your memories,” Elias said, thinking of the plot twist revealed in season three of the show.

  Kurt shot him a pissed look, “What the hell!? Fucking spoilers man!”

  “Hey, I though you didn’t like it! Forget I said anything. Anyways, Daksira, there’s plenty of sugar and spice that goes into love. A boring, lovey dovey story now and then can be heartwarming, but it’s really how problems arise and are dealt with between lovers that makes a romance special.”

  “I could understand that if they were just complicated friends, but lovers?” Chel-Lin shook her head. “Why don’t they just focus on their values of justice and law, without the… connection to each other?”

  Elias scoffed at the question. “Well, it sounds like the Tylas have a very different way of looking at relationships compared to us if that’s the question you’re asking. Besides, how does that expression go again? ‘The opposite of love is apathy’, right? Surely, it’s better to hate someone than just not care about them. Next, you’ll tell me the Tylas don’t have the concept of hatesex.”

  “‘Hatesex’? What is that?” Chel-Lin mumbled.

  “Sex with someone you hate.” Elias calmly explained.

  “Oh. I thought it was going to be more euphemismistic but…” She trailed off. She had become awfully quiet on the trip. Hell, she had been acting strange since their ease of hostilities earlier that week. Was this what it was like to work with someone on equal terms? It felt wrong to Elias, mostly because he had always found some way to annoy his prior work teams regardless of their relative statuses. Old, young – they all fell to Elias’ irritating charms eventually.

  “Let me guess? The Tylas don’t even have sex – they’re above such lowly things?”

  “Not… entirely. It’s just different.”

  That genuinely surprise Elias. He figured the strange race were so far beyond biology that the matter of bumping uglies was beneath them, but it would appear he was mistaken.

  “Huh, well, if it makes you feel any better – Dan and Dialla are a pretty weird and extreme example of that sort of relationship. I’m pretty sure no human in their right mind would be on the fence about a relationship with someone after they’ve spent years running around each other, shooting and blowing each other up.”

  “I would hope so. Love, if you could call it that, did drive them both to some odd places.”

  “You should wait until they adapt season eight – shit gets wild!”

  Elias thought about discussing that season’s finale, a fight atop a space shuttle descending through the atmosphere, as he noticed Kurt taking notes. Elias stifled a chuckle at the thought of the burly brick of a man sitting cross-legged like a wide-eyed child when the protagonists finally reconcile at the end of season ten.

  Bernard was happy to seize a means of escape from his one-sided conversation by leading the group over to a nearby retro arcade. Inside the darkly coloured hall, its narrow ceiling forcing Chel-Lin to drape her outer mantle across the floor, hundreds of both older virtual reality headset machines and the even more screen-only cabinets sat at the ready. Modern gaming often used either direct neural inputs via a cybernetic implant at the back of the neck or holographic displays within a headset. However, since those were expensive and considered too ‘un-nostalgic’ to some, the vast population of fellow enthusiasts back on Titanlock tended to drift towards the VR headset games or handheld controller formats. No matter how advanced technology got, there was always something comfortable about using a handheld controller or joystick. Or keyboards, Elias supposed, but those were on a whole level of sweaty try-hard. He could always tell when someone was using a mouse in a FPS.

  As expected, Kurt was a wizard at the shooting gallery games, being forced to give up after he had nearly cleared half of the game without losing a single life. When Elias requested Bernard to a duel in a fighting game, he initially seemed up to the challenge. However, as he put his hands on the controls, he suddenly blamed a headache and stepped away. For a second, Elias thought he saw a jitter in the older researcher’s hands, but chalked it up to a bad migraine. The arcade was a loud place after all. Instead, Elias saw an easy target in Madison on the dancing rhythm game, its floor made up of various arrows to hit in time with the music. Unfortunately, he was utterly trounced as the excited industrial chemist was able to flawlessly defeat him. It appeared that years of refining his hunched posture had significantly impacted his Dance, Dance, Doctrine Revolution skills, or that she was not an ordinary fella when it came to rhythm games.

  Elias was dismounting from the dance pad when Chel-Lin approached him.

  “I want to try one. A game. A racing one.” She said it as if she was challenging him to a duel to the death. Elias was more than happy to agree. They had tried a variety of the different genres of games at the arcade, but there was one remaining. She led him past a number of machines, towards the racing section. She strode over to a particularly bulky machine, the outer structure painted in bright blues and reds.

  “CrashOut,” Elias said. He was familiar with it – he had played the home console version for hours. “One race. Any vehicle. You beat me, and you get an IOU for anything you want up until the IGS.”

  The cabinet was not some standard racer with a simple wheel to control the vehicle; it had seats with straps and a fully rotating frame meant to emulate the feeling of being a hoverbike racer. Hoverbike racing was not some simple hobby people did for fun – it required years of practice and a strong physique to use one properly. Elias could attest to that personally. Chel-Lin initially looked uncertain, especially since the machine was not designed to fit her body shape in the slightest, but when she heard the reward, her eyes locked onto his.

  “Anything? You’re on, monkey,” she said, practically thrumming with excitement.

  Elias strapped himself into the controls, a saddle-like device with a full heads-up-display helmet attached. The cage around each seat allowed full 360-degree rotation with adjustable suspension. Secured around the waist and gripping the handlebars ahead, he was ready for action. As was his natural routine, he input his usual name for the bike in memory of his uncle, and revved the bike for good measure. When he looked over at Chel-Lin, he raised an eyebrow at her odd position.

  “You good?” he asked.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Instead of using the provided harness, she had instead extended and wrapped her own appendages around the bike. Her oddly shaped head didn’t fit the helmet, so she simply held the domed helm on top of her head with a pair of tendrils, occasionally looking upwards to see her statistics. She would still be able to see the track using the screen ahead of each cage, but Elias felt it was hardly ideal. With more straps protruding from her body and wrapped around the handlebars, she returned his glance.

  “Ape, I hope you’re ready to learn your place as the last across the finish line,” Chel-Lin said, revving the bike. It seemed an oddly practiced manoeuvre. Huh.

  “Well, you’re about to see some primitive skills put to good use,” Elias retorted. “When a competition is on the line, nothing stops a human.”

  At the starting line, the timer counted down.

  Three. Elias shifted position and took a breath.

  Two. Chel-Lin’s mantle was fully extended outwards as a ripple extended across it’s surface.

  One. The two of them both thumbed the nitro boost button. Wait, how did she even know abou-

  The flags went up as both of them accelerated forwards. True to his expectations, the whole setup was high end. As the bike inside the digital space surged forward, so did the physical ones they were holding onto. It was as if the actual rush of wind was blowing in his face. His engine roared in his ears.

  It had been a while since Elias had played a CrashOut match, and even then it had been on his lower-end personal headset. Playing in the actual booth was a different story entirely; the additional stresses put on by the bike turning, twisting and even turning upside down made it far harder. Not as difficult as the reality of using one, but difficult nonetheless. However, with map knowledge and past experience on his side, he took the lead for most of the laps. On his last lap and with half of the track to go, he figured he had the win in the bag.

  That was until, he saw that Chel-Lin going onto the side route for the track. It would take her longer, as it strayed from the main course, but would provide her access to a number of unique power ups. It was something he hadn’t considered, but figured that he still had good chance of winning, even if she got a speed boost. It wasn’t until he did a double take at her screen that his stomach dropped.

  “M-m-motion link!” the game’s narrator cried out.

  Before Elias could even ask if she knew what it did, she immediately started yanking her bike in the air by her tendrils. Repeatedly. The powerup linked the real-world movements of both bikes together, and he found his own machine responding in kind. Over and over the bike heaved off the ground and slammed into his stomach, his harness the only thing keeping him mounted. If Chel-Lin showed any signs of discomfort, they weren’t visible. In fact, it was almost as if the additional distraction didn’t affect her in the slightest. Though his hands still gripped the handle bars, after the first hundred or so gut slams, Elias was beginning to feel nauseous.

  “Chel, hold on! Wait, wait!” Elias cried out, but she was clearly giving him no mercy.

  He had slowed dramatically, crashing into the walls of the track repeatedly due to a lack of focus, and Chel-Lin took the win shortly after. It had been close, barely a dozen meters between them when she won, but Chel-Lin was undeniably the winner. As the screen buzzed with cheers proclaiming her the victor, Elias unstrapped himself from the bike once it came to rest back on the ground and slumped to the floor. Chel-Lin flexed her outer cape in triumph, detaching herself from the bike and looming over him.

  “So, about that IOU?” she said, voice rich with superiority

  “Yeah… just a second,” Elias muttered, pushing himself to a sitting position. “Fine, sure, whatever. Just… christ on a fucking bicycle, how the hell did you know where that powerup was? It was so far off the main course so why…” He trailed off.

  It clicked. She knew. She goddamn knew. Chel-Lin had been the one to lead him to the cabinet, despite the numerous other ones around, Clearly, she had played the game before. That bitch!

  “What can I say? I always plan ahead.” Chel-Link adjusted her scarves and took out her spherical equivalent of a comm device. For moment, he thought she was just checking a message, but then the wireframe outline of a camera lens appeared on its surface. There was the sound of a quiet click. The alien had acquired a rather unflattering photo of him collapsed and looking a little sick.

  “Hey, you delete that now!” Elias shakily stood, leaning against the still warm bike frame.

  “Hmm,” Chel-Lin hummed. “Maybe. If I feel in the mood for it. I think I might just set it as my background for now. And… done.”

  That damn, floating bitch. Elias wanted to call out for assistance from Kurt, not fully trusting himself to avoid vomiting over the sticky carpet of the arcade, but trailed off. His bodyguard was staring daggers into a businessman passing through the arcade with a younger boy, his son perhaps, until the man turned to look around. Kurt’s tightened shoulders, clenched fists, and venom filled sneer faded, as if he had mistaken the man for someone else. Well, Elias knew he would need to discuss that with the man sometime in the future.

  The group were forcefully herded by a very hungry Bernard, having recovered surprisingly quickly from his headache as he practically dragged Elias and Chel-Lin, mid argument, into a nearby sushi train restaurant. A group of Cambiar worked frantically in the kitchen, preparing and plating food at a stupidly fast rate. His stomach still abuzz with nausea, Elias was happy enough to simply sit and zone out as the others ordered a variety of dishes. As he laid his head on his arms, he accidently made eye contact with the Tylas and seemingly started a staring contest, based on the way she refused to look away.

  “I must say, I am not usually a huge fan of fish, but this hyizka is rather delightful,” Madison said, taking a bite of white alien meat atop a mound of rice.

  Elias’ history of old Earth was a bit shaky, but even he could remember that sushi had originated from one of the eastern-most nations that would eventually become part of Heaven’s Doctrine. Though some other aspects of Asian culture had become somewhat taboo in the CCH, with the various languages of the eastern hemisphere becoming the main causality of the negative affiliation with the Doctrine, the continent’s cuisine was still well enjoyed. Elias wasn’t surprised to see that hyizka was the main topping here; the Cambiar had not only filled the sushi train’s kitchen, but also the interstellar market with their own favourite food and had out-competed the CCH for cheap, preserved sustenance.

  “Actually, Dr Dallas, I think hyizka counts as a mollusc,” Kurt said absentmindedly as he stuffed his third roll in a row into his mouth. “Comes in a shell, lives on land most of the time. Just saying.”

  Madison didn’t appear to take the correction well, slumping back in her chair. Elias eventually was forced to concede the staring contest with the insufferable alien, another failure for the day, as he slowly partook in the food. It was rather difficult to avoid blinking first against a species that didn’t have eyelids, or even physical eyes for that matter, it seemed. He slowly started his second plate when he looked at Chel-Lin’s side of the table. A single plate of sushi, a tuna roll, was sat in front of her.

  “Excuse me, but I don’t need to eat,” she said, looking around for its origin.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it, Bumblebee. I’m paying for all this, so dig in,” Bernard leant forward and gave her a pair of finger guns. “And by me, I mean the CCH is paying for my expenses. This is officially a ‘business trip for the purposes of external research’, so eat as much as you want. Isn’t that right, Slab Bulkhead?”

  Bernard elbowed Kurt’s arm, thrusting yet another annoying nickname onto a coworker. Kurt didn’t seem to mind; he just grunted in agreement as he shoved a, christ, tenth roll into his already full cheeks. No wonder the man was built like a dumpster – he could intake the same amount of food as one. If he noticed the despondent stare Madison gave the untouched plate in front of her, he didn’t register it. Elias hadn’t seen normally chipper scientist with anything other than a pleasant smile, so it was a bit concerning to see her expression so down. A strong reaction to getting something wrong, perhaps? Turning back to Chel-Lin, gestured to the food.

  “So… about that sushi,” he said.

  “What about it?” Chel-Lin asked.

  “You gonna eat it or not?”

  She seemed to inspect the dish, extending a strap to prod the food.

  “Look, if you don’t want to eat it, I’m sure Kurt will happily clear your plate,” Elias said. “I just think it might be good to try it. Think of it as one last bit of… interspecies culture exchange. That is, if you aren’t chicken that is.”

  “Chicken?” Chel-Lin tilted her head. “I’m not made of poultry meat.”

  “No, what I’m calling you is a… never mind.”

  Elias aimlessly twirled his chopsticks. It was admittedly petty to try and get back at the Tylas after his earlier loss, but Elias’ wanted revenge. To his glee, he saw the alien give a nod as she turned her attention towards the food.

  Slowly, Chel-Lin lifted the roll with a wafer-thin tendril, clearly not putting confidence in her skill with chopsticks, and weighed it out for a moment. Before Elias could see any real action, she enclosed her mantle around the appendage and food it held. There was no visual confirmation of the consumption, only that when she opened her cape back up the food was gone.

  “I mean, you didn’t use chopsticks like a civilized person, but I will give you props for trying.” Elias grinned.

  “Damn you, Savage. I still have that IOU. Do you want me to start ordering you t-.”

  Chel-Lin was cut off by her spherical data device giving off a high-pitched whine, much harsher than the natural Tylas voice. The grating sound was silenced by the alien with a press from a tendril as she floated away from the table.

  “Excuse me, I have to take this,” she said.

  With that, she slipped out from the table and made her way to the bathroom. Did the Tylas even need to use the toilet? Elias was curious about whether they did, but mostly just wanted to listen in on what she was talking about. Despite their eased tensions, part of him was still slightly cautious about what she might say to Lucian or Rannos about the schematics she saw. She would have to be an idiot to think he wasn’t planning anything special with documents like those. Looking over to see Bernard attempt juggling the empty plates, dropping one, and then conscripting Kurt and Madison to help him clean up the mess, Elias took the opportunity to follow the alien.

  Whistling a tune, he walked over to the bathroom doors. The lack of screams let him know it was unlikely anyone else was in the women’s bathroom; the image of a tall, imposing alien in a tight space would probably make even Kurt a bit concerned. Leaning against the dividing wall between the male and female toilets, he could make out the theremin-like high pitched echoes of the natural Tylas language from the latter door. Though his dull, ape ears, as Chel-Lin would say, couldn’t understand it, and were too limited in range to even make out half of the frequencies the aliens used, he had technology on his side. Though a translation implant would have helped, Elias had always fought as hard as possible to avoid using any inbuilt tech when possible, his one exception being an ID chip. No, Elias had always felt that by remaining fully organic when it came to his abilities, it was another success against those who looked down on him.

  He pulled out a pair of headphones attached to his comm device and loaded a translation application. Pulling the microphone of the wired implement and aiming at the door, he began the translation process. The sounds of Tylas discussion had notably increased in volume. Filtered back into English, albeit using a different voice to Chel-Lin’s normal translator, he was able to listen in.

  “…and you don’t have enough information to make that judgement yet, father.” Chel-Lin said, her voice icy.

  “Watch your tone, child,” another voice said, masculine. It spoke with a commanding tone that stitched a needle of dread into Elias, a tone he was all too familiar with in his own life. “I will not have you ruin my image or the image of the party with this petty attempt at rebellion. Going into their city, filled with their kind? Preposterous. How are the rest of the Proclaimers party going react to this excursion of yours?”

  “Not everything is about you, or those you call ‘supporters’. I am doing what I wish of my own will. Did you not wish for that when I first started this path?”

  “I… Then you should make sure that the effects of your actions do not reflect poorly on those who have sponsored you so far. Can you even fathom the result of what would happen if you ruin us at this conference? How low we would fall? If you crumble, not only me but everyone who has supported us will fall too. Can you bear the weight of that? Do you… Do you want that to happen?” The last words were said slowly.

  “No father,” said Chel-Lin, her previous fire smothered somewhat.

  “I see. Thank you. I need not remind you of how important this is for our people. Scorching Dominant Aveo-Dos and Raging Speaker Jii-Xaar will be in attendance at the main event, and we need to impress them – the fate of those relying on us depends on it. I cannot say I truly care for what the Ith-San-Sha do; you, however, must bring pride to our people and display the power of the Baraldian Heralds. Even if we offend them, cut them off, our people must come first. Please, you must understand this. Use your skills, the ones we have nurtured together, to do what you must. For the Proclaimers, I ask of you to not let these intruders win.”

  “I see. I will keep your words in my heart. But… I must ask…”

  “Go on, daughter”

  “Have you news of mother? She said she would visit when I became of age, and that was some half-dozen cycles ago. Have you received word of her from the capital?”

  Elias heard an exasperated sigh from the male voice. “I…. no, I have not. Perhaps it is better this way. For both our sakes. I think it might be best to temper your expectations of your mother in the future. From the start she never seemed to care for… never mind. Forget I said anything. Stay focused, daughter of mine.”

  “Oh. Right. I understand. Thank you for the words, father. I love you.”

  “I… I will see you at the conference. Goodbye, my child.”

  With that the soft humming of the call ended. It was only as Elias reached up to pull the earbuds away that he realised he had been scrunching his hands into tight balls, strong enough for his nails to leave marks.

  Hearing the door open, he slid into the men’s bathroom to hide. Staring deeply into mirror, he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that he had made hundreds of calls identical to the one he had just heard. The same cold distance between offspring and parent with the same needy probing for results, for victory. In the end, it was always the same with Kantor – Elias would initially stand up or rebel, usually through some inane method of delaying his work or attempting a public affair, only to collapse against the enduring bulwark of his father’s words. Then his own ego would drive him forward until he delivered another prize into the lap of his father with his own reward being meagre words of encouragement before being shuffled onto the next project.

  And now, he couldn’t help but see himself in that poor, frustrating rival of his. No, if Elias was to be true to his goal of being the best, of overcoming any challenges that stood before him, he would not let anyone else in his own position suffer like he had.

  Elias would help Chel-Lin, no matter how much it hurt either of them.