As I sat there, my back up against a wall of the dank pillar-side cave we had climbed into, I took the time to clean out the rough bandages I’d placed over the stab wounds in each of my shoulders the night before while Sarah kept a lookout. By some miracle my arms were back to a mostly functional state, although it would still be some time before I could make some effort with them and not have spikes of pain shooting up and down them. It didn’t really matter, though, I was determined to do what it would take to get everyone back home regardless of how grueling the rehab I would have to do afterwards.

  “Ooh, Alice’s coming!” I heard Sarah call out, and at my nod she disappeared further inside the cave going into who knows where, likely whatever opening she’d used to get inside in the first place.

  My thoughts on her were conflicted.

  On one hand, I was deeply relieved that despite everything that had happened and the weird things she apparently saw, she was clearly still in there, apparently of sound mind despite the slugs’ disturbing attempts to turn her to ‘their side’, whatever that was.

  On the other, I was worried for her quality of life going forward, as, once we’d gone back home, I could not imagine a way she could go back into society before we could find a way to undo what’s been done to her. At least, not without some serious help.

  We might need to help her every step of the way while some science crew gets to work on undoing the physical changes.

  Of course, I was more than willing to be there for her for everything and anything she might need and I did not doubt that everyone else in our little crew would be the same -even if some of them might need a little explaining and convincing- but it being possible to help in some ways didn’t mean it would be easy. Far from it.

  While I was going through scenarios in my head of the unbelievably awkward conversation that would have to happen when it came time to break the news to her family, I heard the sounds of something walking into the little cave I’d appropriated, the cadence of their footprints easily identifying them as human or Guardian. Not long after first hearing the sounds I saw a Guardian emerging from a too small opening in the wall of the cave and before my mind could run wild with possibilities, I identified it to be Sarah. She wore what looked like a resigned smile on her face and was silent, and once she was done popping out of the hole in the wall that had stretched to accommodate her size, she was followed by Alice.

  I was about to greet them when the latter of the two suddenly fell flat on her ass with a wild, fang baring hiss from her mouth and she then scrambled backwards. Sarah had a confused expression on her face but was still quiet, and I had a terrible feeling.

  Oh, shit… I thought with a concerned inner voice.

  “Alice, Sarah, what’s going on?” I asked, already fearing the answer.

  “She says there’s one of them!” said Sarah, the worry in her face matching her tone.

  I turned around, wishing for there to be a monster staring at me behind my back, but there was nothing, only the somewhat distant opening to the cave I’d set up in.

  I turned my head back to the pair that had just entered and knelt down, doing my best to appear unthreatening.

  “Alice, look at me, focus on my words-“ I started, but quickly stopped myself when I caught a telltale twitch from her that I’d grown tired of seeing the last two days.

  “Get AWAY!” She yelled, for the first time making a sound other than a hiss since arriving and shooting a spike tipped tentacle from her back that would have speared through my head had I not noticed the tell and moved out of the way. I took the opening to back off out of reach, both unsure of what to do and worried about what would happen if this situation was allowed to escalate further.

  “Sarah, little help?” I asked her and with a nod towards me, she went to kneel down beside Alice -who by this point had transitioned into a predatory crouch ready to pounce at me at a moment’s notice- placing herself between the two of us.

  “Hey. Hey!” She called, louder the second time as the first had failed to grab the other woman’s attention. “We’re not in danger, this is what I was talking about before, things are… weird”

  After taking a second to process her words, Alice sat back with an expression that practically radiated bafflement, her body language not as tense as it had been but still ready to jump at the first sign of movement. Taking that for the unspoken question that it was, Sarah continued.

  “So, yeah. First of all, don’t freak out but… That’s,” She said, pointing at me. “The captain.” She finished and I could see Alice look confused before some twisted form of worried comprehension wrote itself on her face.

  “That’s her?! Oh, god, what did they do to you?! When did they get you?! Are you okay?” She asked, standing up from her crouch and making to dart for where I stood, her movements no longer as aggressive but still plenty fear inducing.

  “Woah! Woah!” I said, stopping her before she could get to close. “There’s still more you need to know.” I stopped her, motioning for Sarah, who had a hand on her shoulder that would have stopped her if she had not reacted to my call, to continue.

  “Right…” She started reluctantly, and I felt a stab to my heart at making her do this but it would be better for this to come out of her mouth than it would be mine. “Remember when we woke up this morning and all of a sudden, we were all back to normal?” Alice nodded. “Well…”

  My gut twisted at the sight of my friend being put through what I’d gone through after a dry smack to the back of the head.

  Once I’d finished my explanation, the captain ordered my emotionally tired self and a stunned Alice to quickly deal with the thing at the nape of her neck, which she would do by smacking it with a stick like she’d done for me earlier, a painful experience that had driven me to my knees and caused me to barf my guts out, and through which Alice had fared only slightly better. She was currently cleaning out the last of the vomit that had almost erupted from her mouth, much like it had mine earlier in the day, when whatever the thing was that was messing with her head got damaged, and I crouched beside her, making sure her hair didn’t get covered in nasty and generally just offering her what support I could.

  If there had been anything else that could have been done instead of whatever this messed up ritual was, I would have suggested it, but with seeming confirmation that whatever that thing did was still progressing, putting off dealing with it wasn’t an option. Moreover, as if to confirm my fears, her pile of vomit was noticeably smaller and… I guess clumpier than mine, which was a weird thing to try to correlate with being driven crazy but I was far past caring.

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  “Hey Sarah?” Chloe asked from where she stood three steps away.

  “What do I look like to you?” She asked when I looked up at her.

  “Like yourself?” I answered, and this time Alice was the one to look up, confused.

  “No, she doesn’t. She looks like a Guardian.” She said with certainty despite being wrong, which I could understand from having been in the same position, betrayed by my own eyes. Chloe, meanwhile, for the first time since our morning misunderstanding, wore a smile with not a hint of sadness, not one that hid worry about her previous actions or a fake one aimed to make us feel better, just a normal, if anything relieved, smile.

  “See, what did I tell you? I have a knack for this” She said, twirling her stick like she was answering some big unspoken question. At my confused look, she continued. “What, did you already forget what I said about my biggest talent? This just confirms that what happened to you can be stopped, and if it can be stopped then I see no reason why it couldn’t be reversed. Like I said, I’m getting you home safe and sound.”

  I had to stifle a gasp as hope started building up in my chest. Deep down I hadn’t believed Chloe when she’d said she would undo this whole mess we’d found ourselves in. I had a hard time believing it would even be possible, but after this, I began to realize she might have a point. In the span of only a few hours she had, by herself, figured out a key aspect of how our forced transformation worked and even found a way to stop it from progressing.

  And she did it by smacking the problem with a stick!

  I joked inwardly to myself, but I also thought that if she could do something like that with a method this crude, there was no way that the people back home wouldn’t be able to take care of the problem entirely.

  It was a comforting thought.

  Alice, on the other hand, didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm, staring dejectedly at the small pile of nasty stuff that had come out of her.

  “Hey…” I asked her softly, not able to think of a way to ask her what was wrong without souring her mood further.

  “Huh?” She muttered when she noticed my questioning gaze. “Oh, right… Yeah, that’s… That’s good.” She said, and I prompted her to elaborate with a soft squeeze of her shoulder. “It’s just… I guess I was still holding on to hope… That it was all real, and we’d just found a town filled with nice people”

  “And that they’d got to me?” The captain asked with a smirk.

  “NO!” Alice yelled, outraged, a second before we both realized that in her version of reality, the town being real would mean that Chloe getting turned would also be real. When the thought struck her, she shrunk back with a faint flush at her own reaction.

  “Hey, relax. I could never be offended by you showing you care about me.” Chloe said, kneeling down to be at eye level with Alice and hesitantly grabbing one of her hands. “And besides, I think you already know, there is nothing that could be done to either of us that could keep me away from you, and I know for a fact that everyone who’s not here will agree with me. Mike especially.” She finished, really laying it on thick. It seemed to work, though, as Alice appeared to be eating it up. She no longer looked to be as terrified of what was to come and, if she had been slightly flushed before, her entire face was now a deeply embarrassed shade of red, as clear an indication as one could get that her thoughts had been steered well away from the dark path they’d been in before.

  “Sarah, think you can take watch a little longer?” Chloe asked, helping Sarah to her feet.

  “Sure thing.” I answered, because what the hell else was I going to say at that point?

  As I was walking to the balcony to keep a look-out, I glanced back to spot the pair sitting next to each other on a couch giving each other a side hug. Alice leaned onto Chloe, nestling her head between the other’s head and shoulder. The captain at first turned her head away with a grimace, a grim reminder that what I was seeing was not the same as what they were experiencing, but quickly seemed to force herself to overcome her discomfort and lean her head against the person next to her.

  All things considered I guess this went about as well as it could’ve. I can only imagine what would have happened if it had been someone like Mike instead of Alice. He’d probably still be freaking out!

  I thought with a tiny giggle that turned into a sigh before turning my attention to scanning the crowd that went about their day-to-day lives in this fake town I couldn’t name.

  “Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it,” Said Alex, staring at the grim sight ahead of us. “We might be screwed.”

  On the plus side, after backtracking all the way back to our pod and finding a safe vantage point to observe its surroundings and plan an approach, we’d found that most of the Guardians that liked to loiter around it looking for someone to maul had cleared out, leaving only a few to spot us on our approach.

  On the other hand, the pod that we had planned to use to do a space hop over to the shuttle that could finally get us out of here, was nowhere to be found. In its place was a gaping hole venting atmosphere into the uncaring void, our pod and like a half dozen Guardians floating away from us, never to be seen again. All the while, whatever Guardians were left behind worked tirelessly to plug up the hole in spite of the force of the atmosphere rushing past them, and the hole was already noticeably smaller than the one our pod would have made.

  “Ah, shit.” Said Fae, clearly agreeing with the larger man’s outlook on the situation. “Guess we’re back to square one then. So, we go to the shuttle and fight everything on the way?”

  “That’s a quick and easy way to get killed or worse.” Said Alex, stating the obvious.

  Fae looked angry for a second and then pushed back with some energy. “Well what the hell else can we even do at this poi-?”

  “No.” I interrupted whatever was happening before it could devolve any further.

  “No?” Asked Fae incredulously.

  “No.” I answered again, deep in thought.

  “Elaborate?” She asked, more confused than she’d been angry.

  “I’ve been thinking about it on the way over, these things got an entire giant tree into orbit, so they have to have some way of moving up and down from the surface. Maybe we can use that to get a lift to the mothership? We already know our shuttle will be crawling with creatures and now it looks like they’ll dump it into space before letting us get close…”

  “You want to bet our survival on some alien technology that may or may not actually be there and that, as far as our intel is concerned, shouldn’t even exist?” She questioned.

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, really?” She questioned. Whether she was surprised at my words or that I was even the one saying them, I could not know. Regardless, I continued.

  “We’ve been running around like headless chickens, going to the pod, then to the shuttle, back to the pod and now to the shuttle again. Hell, we’re lucky to even be alive after what happened to the rescue crew… If we keep doing the same thing over and over… Our luck is gonna run out eventually.”

  “Huh. And how do you expect us to even fly this supposed Alien ship that most definitely exists and won’t lead to a dead end that will leave us cornered?” Fae questioned sarcastically, but I was prepared for this, that being the exact question I had already asked myself as I thought of this hare-brained scheme.

  “Well, I don’t know, exactly, but we’ve got a dedicated pilot, a crazy engineer that knows how to work with pretty much anything, and a walking toolbox. If it can be done, then… We can do it.” I finished resolutely.

  “And if it can’t be done?” She asked pointedly.

  “Then we’re dead already.” I finished grimly.

  “…”

  “…”

  “What?” I asked the silent duo.

  “Who are you? What have you done with Mike Shits-his-pants?” Asked Fae, to which I just glared at her.

  “Well, I don’t have any better ideas, so if the big guy’s okay with it…” Fae started, and upon receiving a stupefied nod from Alex, she continued. “I guess we’re going with that.” When she finished, we all turned back, heading deeper into the tree and going into parts unknown, which we would attempt to explore with a crew less than half its original size.

  “You’re a tool…” I caught Alex shyly grumbling, earning himself a giggle from Fae.

  I am so done with this space tree.

  Chapter 10: You did WHAT?!