FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"I feel hungry..."

I was frozen by my mate's words, staring with the same disbelief that Jill had looking down at what she had done. The violence of what had just occurred. A rescue mission to reunite a family that we thought we had been prepared for with a warning from the future. Nerves in my leg exploded to life as I shared my wife's pain. Feeling what she did my leg folded beneath me, not quite able to bear my weight.

But...but...she dodged the attack! This...couldn't...Shadi had told us...

"Kim?" I whispered.

Her eyes rolled upwards into her head as the will to hold it up fled. The thud of it hitting the concrete floor broke my paralysis. Just as I broke the silence with my roar.

KIM!

Shouts of alarm hammered my flared ears as I sent pallets of dry goods and bodies flying out of the way of my blind charge. I smelled...her blood...it was all that I could smell. Pooling beneath her destroyed leg in arterial spurts. Kim's blood...my mate's blood.

"KIM!" Reaching beneath her with one leg, I shook her, looking for any response. There was nothing, she wasn't responding! Remembering my new ability, I reached out for her and got the white noise of her unconscious mind. Our children, I could feel our children's panic. They couldn't feel their mother!

With a gargantuan effort, I tore my gaze away from the amputated hand that I had held just minutes before. That was still twitching even then, as Jill snatched Jack away from it to curl her tail around him and their son protectively. Remembrance, and revulsion, flashing in her eyes as some parts of her reassembled like a shattered jigsaw puzzle. I called out to Alex and the two operators with us at the same time I sent feelings of reassurances and love to our children.

"Alex...Alex...her leg. Tourniquet the veins. I need to elevate her tail and legs. I don't know if we can go into sho..." I stopped as the world vanished. I had the briefest of glimpses of a white void.

Someone[[N1]](#_msocom_1) was screaming. But I couldn't make sense of who it was. I was staring at the ceiling as I writhed on the floor. I could taste blood. I could feel my neck spike scraping across the concrete as my body demolished whatever I hit as I flailed. Pained screeches came from inhuman throats around me that were joined by more human shouts of incomprehension.

A part of me had been struck with the force of a kiloton bomb. A vital connection had been severed. A part of me had been cut from the whole. Kim was gone. I couldn't sense Kim. I couldn't feel her mind. Our children cried out in confusion. They cried out from her womb. Their mother. Their protector. Where was the warmth that cradled their tiny undeveloped minds? It was gone. She was gone.

Kim. Kim the screaming. I couldn't save them. Please stop the screaming. I don't want to go back. The gunfire. The screams. The gunfire. I don't want to go back.

The leg pain I was sharing vanished with her. I couldn't feel her. My Kim was gone. My Kim was gone. New pain in my chest joined with the burning from my throat as my wound reopened. The gunshot sound of scales cracking accompanied the sound of roared screams.

I felt detached. Everything I saw, felt, heard, was across a void that I couldn't make sense of. Where was Kim? She wasn't here. She was dead.

"She's not dead Tom!" My brother shouted with a pain wracked voice.

Of course she was dead. I should be able to connect to her. My Kim was dead. I didn't even feel it, holding my head in one paw, as I whipped through the wall of the warehouse.

Who was screaming? Kim, make them stop. Kim, the screaming. I don't want to go back. Kim, please make it stop. I couldn't save them. Kim, why won't the screaming stop? Kim? Please...

"Big Bang, Prometheus, someone, anyone, hold him still. God, it fucking hurts! What is this?"

Why was my brother hurting? Why were the others moaning?

Strong hands...no...paws latched onto my neck as I squirmed on my belly. The sight and cold feeling of snow greeted my eyes and nose as my head slammed again and again into the ground outside. I couldn't get away from the sound of the sobbing, it was so close. My mind burned, reaching for a part of itself that had died.

"Kim?" I heard someone whimper. It almost sounded like me. Where was I? Where was me? Who was I? The sky appeared in my eyes again accompanied by the feeling of being pinned. The wailing cries continued as the heavens above spun. The feeling of more paws on me came distantly. I wasn't who I was just seconds, hours, days ago. What had changed? Kim. She was me. I was her. She was dead. I was dead.

"KIM!" Someone roared their pain to the unfeeling cold. I tasted blood. Blood. Her blood. I could smell her. Where was she? She was gone.

But she wasn't. A tunnel opened before me that I fell into along with my children. At the end of it, I could feel her. Ribbons of thought, of concern, of loss, were entangled for the briefest of moments. She touched me, we caressed each other's minds and then calmed our children. I saw Shadi's form grow through a watery sheen of tears.

Kim.

Kim was alive.

My mate, my friend, was alive.

The screaming slowed to gargled breathless gasps. I felt whole once more. I was the one who'd been screaming. My throat burned and the taste of blood was thick in my mouth. Kim was alive. But neither was she here. She had been taken somewhere to see Shadi. Our precious reassurances to each other gave us the strength we needed before what we saw and felt of each other faded.

This time, she did not disappear. A beacon remained. A light shining through the darkness to remind that she still lived. That she was there. I set every chain of thought, every connection that I could create, to that reminder. That beacon. That guiding star. My cries began to die off as my lashing body calmed. She was alive.

Now it was my job to keep her that way.

"Alex..." I coughed and spat blood, staining the snow with the nearly black liquid. "Did you...did you clamp the vein?" My only answer was a wordless moan.

Big Bang, Pat, and Joey, warily let go of me and stepped back unsteadily to watch with agitated strokes of their tails. I could see symptoms in all of them that something in the last few minutes had affected them badly. Big Bang left a smear of blood on the tip of her nose as she swiped at what was leaking from a nostril. Pat's unfocused eyes rolled as she shook her head and swayed drunkenly on her paws. Joey sat down heavily with a thump and spread his legs wide to brace himself while staring dizzily at the ground. Not far away, Prometheus was gently laying an unconscious Thing 1 to the ground and looking at me with a guarded expression in his eyes.

I didn't know what was wrong with them. I only had room in my mind for Kim and our children. I paid their conditions mind merely as long as it took for my sight to pass over each of them. Alex was stumbling to his feet and throwing himself at my wife's severed limb. The other operators leaned against nearby pallets, moaning with their hands clutching their heads in the aftermath of whatever had just happened. One of them vomited on the floor even as I watched. Another was already wearing his breakfast.

"Tom." Alex slurred. His eyes red with burst veins. "What was that?

I didn't have an answer to give him. Nothing that could have helped immediately in any event. So, I told him the only thing I could. To hurry and do what I could not to stop my wife's bleeding.

Before he had seemingly keeled over, Alex had clamped the artery to her paw. However, there were still several veins remaining to be addressed. Rushing over to press my ear against her ribs after nosing her slack wing out of the way, I did a quick assessment of vitals. Heart rate, steady. Breathing, steady. Lifting my head, I called out a warning and then quickly moved to lay my head on the side of her abdomen. Four rapid heartbeats vibrated through the bones of my skull. Entangling filaments of thought with the frightened ones of my children to calm them.

Reassurances that it was okay raced to them alongside memories I had of Kim standing with her head raised into the wind as she stood to watch an oncoming storm. Images that imparted a sensation of Kim's strength. That she would be okay. Their terror began to ease, although it was not until I felt their confusion increase that I realized I had sent an image of Kim as a human. In a nightmarish call back to zero day, my image of Kim warped and twisted as she fell on to her hands until the Kim I knew today stood before the same building storm. The thought that these children would never know what she was like then, that they would not even able to recognize the feeling of her mind as she once was, saddened me.

The idea that her mind then might feel different than her mind now terrified me.

Keeping my head and ear on the rhythm of our children's hearts until I was sure that they were calm, my eyes wandered to fall on Jill. The muscular woman lay curled around her child and her husband. Blood leaked from her nose, as did tears from her eyes, while she craned to look over what she was responsible for causing. Her scared child peeked over her sheltering arm with one blood shot eye next to his father who sat staring blankly at nothing on one of his wife's back paws.

"Alex, and you four, I need you right now. Can you function?" Swinging my head away, I was the one who started and coordinated the recovery. Whatever I had done to them had rattled them badly. Everyone here would need to be checked for brain trauma.

My brother muttered something about his head, two of the operators grunted their assent that they were good to go, and the other two collapsed to the ground unconscious. We were combat ineffective. We needed medical evacuation.

"You." I barked, pointing at the shooter who had decorated himself with his last meal. "Get coms with the Airfield. Tell them we need medics and transportation. One urgent surgical, six urgent, 3 litter, 3 ambulatory. Make sure they know one of them is a child of the egg! Tell them to send Virginia and at least three others larger than Kim's size."

Swaying on his feet, I knew he wasn't going to work as soon as he started talking. "How many with ketchup?"

Switching from pointing at him, I swung my wing to the one next to him who was already easing his buddy to sit down against the wall and taking his weapon. "You make the call."

Turning my head to my older brother while my wing folded back. "Alex it took us 45 minutes to get here at half speed. Can you make Kim ready to go in twenty minutes?"

I had my doubts if he was up to it. From the roof of the building I could see how badly his hands were shaking. Neither did I have an option. My hands could still pick up and manipulate things, but nothing that had a cross section less than about thirty centimeters. Worthless for repairing an injury until some far larger tools came about designed for our use.

"I...I don't know. I don't know. I'm...I'm having a hard time here. Tom, what happened to us? Was that you?"

I didn't answer him right away. Settling next to my wife, my wing extended to cover her. Hugging her tightly I thought it over before giving him what I could come up with. "The timing of it fits when I was screaming for Kim. Alex...I thought I lost her. I thought she was gone. I don't know what I did, but I might have hurt you all. Alex...if she hadn't been reconnected to me, I might have accidentally killed you all. Maybe...maybe when she wakes up."

I looked away from him to kiss her neck while rubbing her belly with a leg. Feeling her supple scales through my paw as I comforted our children. "When she wakes, maybe we should separate ourselves from others until we know more about how to control whatever this is. Alex...what I could have done to all of you..."

"I don't...think this is a good time to be having this conversation, Tom. I...urk..." He ran past my following nose to stagger to the nearby women's restroom to vomit. Craning my head over to look at the stump of my wife's leg, I had to confirm that he had done what he could for now.

A toilet flushed and I heard running water at the same time the vile smell of his vomit added to the miasma of sickness surrounding me. I was eyeing the clamps I could see dangling from within Kim's limb and assessing the condition of the wound. It made me sick to realize that the first look I could get at the changes wrought inside our bodies' limbs was in my mate's broken form.

The fractures of her four leg bones were surprisingly sharp, as were the cuts severing her soft tissue. The keenness of the claws and the force of the strike created a relatively clean amputation. A desperate hope began to form in my head as Alex continued.

"Tom, whatever it is, we'll work through it together. Okay buddy? No herring off into the wilderness just because you put all of us into an MRI to get scanned. Even if my fucking head feels like it's split into seven pieces..." He trailed off, muttering to himself like he had forgotten that each of my ears were bigger than his chest. There was a metallic crashing noise and then the sound of dozens of small objects pattering to the floor from the bathroom. I had no idea what he was doing until he came out holding an armful of pads and dumped them next to his pack.

Hygiene pads. Sterile absorbents. A great idea.

"We'll just have to keep you on an even keel by keeping Kim alive. Now, while we wait, can you think of anything that might help?" He asked while digging into his pack for a bottle of tablets that he dry swallowed two of. Shaking the bottle at the last remaining conscious shooter, he took two as well without question. I placed a hand and a hind paw over Kim's vital areas to keep track of her and our children's heart beats while maintaining the focus of one ear on her breathing rhythm.

"Start wrapping her paw in this fabric and plastic." I told him, dragging over a crate of clean rags and a roll of wrapping with my tail. "I'll put it in the box and the others outside can pack it in snow."

"Tom." Alex said gently, laying his hand on one of my claws. "Don't get your hopes up. Replantation is hard enough to do, and Kim is not..."

I dismissed his concern, only noticing my tail had acted out my disregard when he fell as it flicked by his head. "We have to try at least. Hey, you!" I grumbled at the operator. "What's your name?"

"Delta Dan." He said, with a lopsided smirk. Cute. Real cute.

"I can always rip your mind apart to find out." I reminded him, although I had neither the intention, nor faith in my capability, to do any such thing. But, since he didn't know what my scent and meters of snout were expressing, he took the comment to be deadly serious.

"It's Steve! It's Steve!" He yelled, covering his head with his arms.

"Okay Delta Steve. I have a mission for you. Call St. Luke's in Boise and tell them we have a transtibial amputation coming in. The cut is complete and clean." I remarked, watching Alex open a bag of saline and spray it into a leg that was thicker than most of his body was tall.

I had no illusions that any surgeon would have done anything like this before. Instead basing my shaky hopes on the size of the anatomy making things easier. And the vague idea that I could appeal to the vanity of some MDs in performing a precedent setting operation that they could spend the rest of their lives bragging about being in the history books for. Or make money off. One or the other would suffice, I imagined, if I could get that stubborn administrator that I'd seen in Kim's memories to sign off on it.

"Better put yourself and six others in for an MRI as well."

"Hahahahah." He laughed and then held his head when the vibrations set his nerves on fire once more.

"Did base give you an ETD?"

"No." He replied, pulling out his personal phone to keep the sat. phone line clear.

Lapsing into silence, I lay my head down next to Kim's and continued my silent monitoring to the racket of Big Bang outside fussily directing the others to help in dealing with the aftermath. With one eye I watched as another soldier woke up only to be pressed into use by Alex to begin laboriously prepping Kim's stump and amputated limb for transport. Her blood, my depression, Jill's pained regret, and the smell of vomit combined into a fetid stench that I wanted to get away from as soon as possible. To get Kim away from. To get us both out into the open air where a winter's breeze could scrub the fumes away.

Distractedly, I noted a low moaning noise reverberating in the warehouse. It wasn't until I felt Alex's hand on my wrist, and I was drawn from the despairing circle of my thoughts, that I realized it was my keening that I had been hearing.

"She'll be okay, Tom. You just have to be realistic about her leg."

Sadness fell on me hard and I blinked back tears as I looked down at my brother. Kim...our babies...our family...was it worth risking so much? Had it been worth it? The pain? Almost losing what we had built? What we had created with each other? Was I being selfish? It felt like my world had ended, and without even knowing it I had caused more harm to everyone around me. All this pain, just to help those who had been torn by aliens who tell us this is for the best.

I sighed through my nose in a snort that ruffled Alex's winter parka. The pity party could wait.

"Jill, come here. Bring your family. We have risked much to help bring your family back together. It is time to finish it."

She slunk forward carefully, keeping her family protected between thick, wide set, legs. Her head hung low and her eyes never rose from the ground just past the end of her snout while she cried out in apology through voice and scent. Nosing her child and her husband out of her way, she fell to the ground to snake the last little bit towards me with her belly scales scouring the floor by their thousands.

Egg mother of Maze Seeker welcomes teeth for harm to Matriarch with egg! Egg mother of Maze Seeker beg tend to them! Keep warm, safe, happy, after egg mother gone! She turned her head away from me, and my growing scent of dismay, to kiss her child and her unresponsive husband. Take egg father to little room with funny colors Maze Seeker. Egg mother begs not see next!

Alex and Steve looked up from their tasks in shock when Maze Seeker opened his mouth and cried like he was dying as he threw himself at his mother. Wrapping his legs and his wings around her foreleg he wailed forlornly at her before twisting his head towards mine. Letting go, he flung himself in between us and begged me to spare her life.

Powerful gusts of air burst from my nostrils as I sighed. I needed as many around me aware as I could get. Time was running out and with my wife lying unconscious next to me so was my patience. Peeling my head away from the mewling child tugging at my heartstrings I sought out the smell of Jack's pack and what I needed within. Carefully opening it with my teeth and a single claw (by carefully, I mean it exploded into scraps of fabric) so that I could get at the contents that tumbled out. The reminders that Jack had brought to reawaken who his wife was.

She whimpered when I laid my tail across her neck and drew her closer. It took her a moment to realize the contact wasn't through the teeth she'd been expecting while I soothed her. Her terrified smell was replaced by a curiosity that I encouraged in her and her son with reassuring thoughts and scents. At least she was visibly relaxing her tense muscles even though she didn't open her tightly clamped eyes. Dividing my attention between my mate, Jill, and her family, was disconcertingly easy. But, once I got over the initial oddity of splitting myself in so many different ways so thoroughly, I began my attempt at healing her.

Looking down at the items from Jack's pack to take stock of what I had, my vague plan rapidly coalesced. A surge of panic came from one of my children and I calmed her while looking over the bric-a-brac to separate what was useful from what wasn't. Three pictures, one of Jill holding her son as she breastfed him, another of a slightly younger Jill, and one last one of the whole family. An ornate hairbrush that Kim would have loved to have owned herself, and a wooden toy car.

"Jack." Not getting a response from him, I tilted my head to look into his eyes with one of mine. Nobody was home. Reaching out, I tried to get a sense of what he was feeling or thinking. All I got was a looped set of images of what his wife and son looked like before and what they looked like now. The shock had undone him. As little as I knew about what I could do, I was now confronted with another layer of difficulty. How do I get her back with the biggest touchstone that I had gone?

"Alex, you and the others go outside and pack...pack Kim's hand for transport. Get the others to help you, I don't want any of you in here for this. I don't know how this is going to go."

"Are...you sure you don't want me to stay to he..."

"No!" I yelled, not realizing until I noticed that Alex and the others had frozen that I had snarled the word. I felt my ears and that long thing growing out of my back listlessly droop at how terrified of me my own brother was.

Lowering my volume and closing my mouth, I repeated myself more softly. I was terrified that I could hurt him again. Even if earlier was an accident, that did nothing to dispel the smell of my shame that it had happened at all. As Alex was afraid of me, so to was I afraid of what Kim and I had just learned we were capable of. "Please Alex, don't argue right now. I'll monitor Kim and tell you if her heart or breathing rates change. You've done all that you can for her at this point. We can't transport her with a blood transfusion running from one of us to her and, unless this a medical supply company that we're in, you don't have enough saline to push into her to make a difference."

Finally getting through to him, I convinced him and the conscious team of operators that were with him to collect their insensible partners and go outside to help Big Bang triage the rest. Scooping my mate's paw reverently from the floor, I set it outside carefully on the packed snow with the material to wrap it. Telling Big Bang what needed to be done, she enthusiastically began to set about doing as I asked while Alex tried to evaluate those outside for lingering brain trauma.

Leaving me to turn my sad attention first onto Kim, and then onto the Amazonian female staring raptly with her son at the picture of her human self breastfeeding. Her fear of my retribution thankfully forgotten.

Good. She might be part way there without me. The less my uncertain intervention was needed the better.

"Who is that Jill?" I softly, coaxingly, murmured to her. Draping a wing over her reassuringly, I sent encouraging nudges to her mind. I could feel the connection tenuously form between what she was then and before. She was so close...

"I..."She stopped and her pointed tongue appeared to run along her rigid lower lip as she looked from the picture to her son and back again. "I... egg mother...know..."

There!

In my mind's eye an arc of light flashed between two glowing orbs. Looking at her son and her husband tears collected in her eyes. Memory of who she was flashed past me along the incandescent bridge I'd just seen reform.

Her view as she looked down at the arms holding her baby in a hospital room before Jack's face filled it to kiss her. The taste of his mouth. All her friends at their home to welcome her and the child after their discharge from medical care. The thumping of her heart, and the warmth as she smiled, in response to the surprise welcoming home. Her fear overcoming all thoughts and concerns for what was happening to her after she had briefly lost consciousness and awoken with her car nose first in a ditch. How little she cared for the tears in her blouse that exposed a growing chest which no longer had the breast tissue she needed to satiate the hungry shrieks from the baby seat.

Misted eyes became a torrential outpouring. I tried to soothe her storm-tossed thoughts and bring Jack into the connection that I held between her and her son. The ball of static and looped images that he was stuck in rebuffed me and he remained incognizant of what was happening.

Arnold's feeling of confusion passed to his mother at seeing her mostly human shape appear to comfort him. Her desperation driving her to wedge the clawed fingers of her elongating hands into the twisted frame of the door. Using inhuman musculature, she ripped the door free and threw it like a piece of cardboard. Arnold churled happily and reached out to her with his lengthening face and neck to nuzzle her cheek just beneath an altered eye. The sight of a new pair of arms hovering behind her shoulders made his cramped wings jerk and twitch against their confinement in the baby seat.

The feeling of her glowing love as she pinned the rabbit carcass beneath a distended hand and bit the result of her hunt into chunks that her dearest one could swallow. Thoughts of a life wearing strange things, of moving in strange ways, faded from their minds. How she thrummed in relief that her child no longer knew hunger. How he chuffed in amusement through his long nose when her rough tongue scoured the hot tasty blood from the scales of his jaws.

By the time she could no longer stand on two legs, she had forgotten the human language she had learned. By the time that she stretched her head down next to Arnold's to lap up water from a creek with her tail curled guardedly around him, she had forgotten how strange that should have felt. By the time she soared into the sky to play with her child, she had forgotten that she was once human.

With a howling sob she collapsed against my side as the realization of who, what, she was flooded back into her. I was there for her as her body shook with each strangled inhalation. Looping her head around to pin her son and her husband against her shoulder, I was there for her as one existence painfully integrated with another.

The sense of pride that filled her breast as she watched from above as her son dove down to latch his jaws around the neck of a buck and break its neck with the strength of his. The love she felt, with Jack's arms around her waist, watching the first time he had lifted his head and smiled at them.

Her head knocked Jack to the ground, where he lay unresponsive, as she pinned him down with her broad snout to rain tear drops the size of the vacant eyes that stared past her. Doing what I could to slow her rapid breathing and racing mind, I let work through what had happened. Nudging with delicate reassurance whenever she careened of control towards panic or depression.

I saw as little Arnold led her to the building, that we were in now, months ago judging by the lack of snow on the ground. How happy she was that they had somewhere safe to hide free of recent scents of the strange creatures that pointed loud things at her that bit and confused. Through her sight I saw that she was the one who had found the side door and broken it down with a nudge of one knuckle to allow Arnold to explore the large roll up door around the corner. Faded memories whispered to her to tell her son to look for a...push to move...a button. Drawing in the dirt what she saw in her memory, even if she did not know what it was called, her son soon had the overhead door trundling open.

" I Puzzle Seeker! I help egg mother. Am smart?"

Looking down at the little one, I felt my ears perk up and my jaws part in a warm expression as I. Jill's attention snapped to the present, and her eyes found her child.

"Arnold very smart! Help Jill, help egg mother. Very smart Puzzle Seeker. Know you was you Arnold? I Jill. Jill never forget again! This Jack, Jack bring others to help! We family, share nest, are happy! Jack egg father before egg. We one! Jack, Jill, Arnold. One nest, one family! Happy, happy!" She cried out with an alien trill and plucked Jack from the ground in one paw to hold against her chest protectively alongside her son. "We different now. But matter not because we one family!"

Arnold whistled gleeful acceptance in his feeling that all was right with his world and buried his nose beneath his father's arms. There was still no reaction on Jack's expression. The sound of new wing beats came from outside, one pair vastly louder than the rest, and I gently shut down my part of their bond while leaving theirs open. Whatever I could do for Jack would have to wait for another time and for more surety on my part.

A riot of voices begging for help and cries of pain battered at my sorely used senses from outside as our reinforcements landed. Inside, Jill shied away from the noise, skittish after being so long on her own, further down a secondary aisle of the warehouse. Which only ended up hiding the first two and a half meters of her body behind the stacks. Craning above her cover, her head reappeared to watch once she was happy that her family was safe.

My nose twitched as I recognized the scent coming in through the hole I had made before first Dan's and then Virginia's heads appeared inside. Virginia's massive nostrils flared, and she made a grumbling moan at the sight of my wife.

"Oh my! Her babies? Are her babies okay?" The smell of her overwhelming fear washed into the building. Erasing the stench of Kim's blood from my nose for once.

"Get a medic in here to watch her wound, and then help me put her on my back. I'm flying her to the hospital." I replied in turn, adding the scent of my anxiousness to spur them into action.

Dan's head left to relay what I had said, unnecessarily, as it was more than loud enough for a new Air Force medic to come running in. Already knowing the enormity of what she was to encounter from the severed hand outside, she didn't break stride as she veered around me and Kim both to look at the outstretched leg.

"Okay!" The rail thin brunette said once she was in position. Throwing her backpack onto her back, she stumbled a bit as the weight of it knocked her off balance before calling out her readiness in a surprisingly chipper voice. "Ready when you are to get her outside! I've been told that St. Luke's is waiting for us and those two you know at that university in Colorado are being briefed on what happened right now. So, let's go, go, go!"

"Keep clear." I warned her. "And don't go near Jill."

"Who's..." she started before jumping with a squeak as the breeze from Jill's lowered nostrils hit her neck.

I worked with Virginia to lift Kim by putting our necks beneath her wings and heaving her up off her front paws. The scales of her hind paws and tail scuffed across the floor as we dragged her from the building supported on the weight of our spines. With one eye all I could see was her black flank. With the other, her dangling limb and the blood soaking through the bandage. The medic, I could see her name and rank as being Technical Sergeant Chan, followed the blood trail in the snow with a concerned expression and wringing hands.

Our children, alarmed that their mother was moving when she wasn't awake to talk to them, clung to my link to them. I sent them pictures of their home and soothing sensations of safety to combat the rising worry that was forcing my own anxiety to spiral out of control.

More snouts quickly found their way under Kim's body to support her weight as soon as it was within reach and we eased onto her side in an area that someone's tail had swept clean of snow.

Pulling my head from beneath her wing, I gently refolded her limb and pushed more of my conviction that everything would be all right for us to my children. I lulled them into an uneasy sleep with memories of the lullabies Kim and I had sung to our other kiddos for a chance to reset for the next part stage of the extraction.

Alex was finally getting the attention he needed, sitting off to the side as another doctor, judging by his rank, flashed a pen light in his blood shot eyes. Chan froze, only momentarily, when I lowered myself to look closely at my wife's bleeding with worry radiating from between my scales. Peeling away some of the more blood-soaked gauze she peeked at the opened spaghetti of sheared veins within. Humming to herself she pulled what clamps she had from her pack and tightened them against the last of the sources of the hemorrhaging before zip tying the handles together.

"Ma'am! Please verify that she's ready for movement!" the tiny medic called to another group of medical workers huddled among the dizzier members of our earlier party. One, a bit apart from the rest, peeled herself from taking pictures of the break my love's hand to come look at the stump.

"Good job. Good job. Where did you learn how to suture arteries like that? Well done!" Lieutenant Colonel Ackerman told the blushing enlisted woman.

"Actu..."

I interrupted her by coughing obnoxiously to get their attention. Ignoring the fact that I knocked them both to the ground, I let them know that we were wasting time here with a thump. They looked back at my tail laying on the ground and then back up at my head.

"Is she ready for transport or not?" I asked politely, with only a little bit of a growl. I swear. "Because from what I can see, the bleeding has stopped. So, unless you can give me one valid reason why you're still in the way, move."

I could see the indignation swelling in the chest of the officer. Like watching a cartoon hitch up their britches before launching into a pointless tirade of offense. I didn't have time for that. Kim didn't have time for that.

"MOVE!" I snarled at them, the twitching feeling on the top and sides of my heads letting me know my fins were sharply raised in agitation. Adding to the nightmarish presentation I knew that I and the others made when our mouths opened wide in true anger. Stomping towards them to get them away from Kim, I looked down past my gaping jaws to see them out of the way. Running until they were hidden behind the forelegs of a disapproving female, that I didn't know the name of, where they were out of the way.

I could barely feel the cold of the snow through the insulating scales of my belly when I lay down in the covered parking lot. At least until I twitched my scales open to allow the frozen powder entrance to cool my heated veins. Being agitated, even if I wasn't acting any differently than I would have in a similar situation with casualties before, wasn't doing anything to hurry this process along. Alex and the rest hadn't been checked for flight yet.

"Virginia, help me get my mate onto my back, and please tell me who is in charge here?"

"I am." A man wearing an OCP camouflage uniform with no rank, insignia, or name on it, said. He was wearing one of the flight harnesses that I noticed that all the smaller ones with us were, and a helmet of some unfamiliar design that had a thick curving shield raised upwards. On his back was an assault back with twin antennas rising through the top and a thickly braided cord running to his headwear.

Virginia protested that she was better suited to carry my wife until I countered her objections by reminding her that she would be best suited to protecting us given her size.

It didn't matter if it would be difficult for me to carry my larger wife. I would do it. There was no doubt in my mind. Lessons learned through the grueling training I had undergone in the Airforce wouldn't allow me to entertain any other outcome.

"What are your plans then for transport and security on the way back, whoever you are?"

He shrugged and fingered the harness that he was wearing to clip on to something. Lifting my head, I looked around and spied that Dan, pacing around the perimeter of the industrial complex we were in on patrol, had a patchwork set of straps running down his back from neck to tail. At the base of his neck was another thickly bundled airman with a GAU-17/A minigun capable of firing 7.62mm rounds at 4000 per minute. Trailing behind the Marine were two young lost ones that took turns pouncing on his tail as it wagged by over their heads. Each of them had smaller angular black shelters on their backs. The smaller structures only four meters long and equipped with quivering antennae that oscillated wildly with the impromptu game of their carriers. From inside each I could hear shouts to behave and the sound of small ones rolling back and forth.

"Me?" The nameless service member before me replied. "I'm here to provide security on the one who says his name is Dan. Transport? That's on you usedtobehumans to put together, I guess. Fuck man, woman, whoever you are, this unit is just about figuring things out as we go along and developing an SOP that the rest of the military can use. Everything is experimental, so you tell me what works for you. I had enough of a hard time convincing some of you just to keep together in a group with a few hundred meters between you. It's not easy convincing beasts that weigh a hundred times what you do to behave. To top that, my CO is a goddamned dragon! Do you know how much effort I have to exert every day to convince myself that I'm not curled up in a gutter clutching a bottle of some rotgut and locked in a kind of twisted dying hallucination?"

Some of that was amusing, some of that pissed me off, but none of it helped me at that time. So, like the beast dragon that he viewed me as, I snorted dismissively in his face. Using the authority granted in me by the fact that those in charge here didn't want to exert themselves over those a hundred times their size I took control of the situation with the help of Dan, Big Bang, and Virginia.

"Virginia, what were you doing on the way out here?" I asked her as she slung Kim's shoulder and injured leg over me before repeating the process with her hips. My wings came up to align her on my back and I collapsed my neck spike with a twitch of bone and muscle so that she could lay flat against me. Her front legs dangled in front of my shoulders and her hind legs dragged behind us alongside our tightly wound tails. It would be awkward, but I thought I could manage it if only I could find some rope to keep her from sliding off. The real question was...how was I going to get off the ground...

"I just flew around everyone else dear. I had the most pleasant Doris Day tune in my head and couldn't help singing to keep everyone's spirits up. It was absolutely dreadful when we heard what happened to poor Kim, I'm afraid there was so much anger and anxiety that it was all that I could do to keep everyone from scattering to the winds. I'm sure that we would be in all kinds of mischief right now if I didn't make everyone mind me."

The lost ones began clamoring about how they looked to Virginia for guidance because "She great one!" and that she was "Strong in life!" which was awesome, or something.

Whatever kept them listening for the time being.

The rapt way that they stared at me as well as if they were looking for guidance was more than a little spooky. I didn't want to have that kind of power over other people...children of the egg...that were capable of so much. Even the smallest ones here, looking to be not far out of adolescence and still continuously questioning everything, were more than large enough to flip a car like a toy.

Virginia finished scanning Kim over closely as I acclimated to her weight pressing down on me. The thick but supple scales of her belly a reassuring sensation as they whispered against my fin. I could feel the heat of her groin and lower belly centered just above my hips accompanied by the gentle flutters of our children. Content at feeling the nearness of their father when their mother remained closed to them. The delicate membrane along my spine sensing the flow of blood through Kim's great arteries as her heart thudded strongly through layers of muscle in her and myself.

"Ackerman now is not the time to get spun up about rank. I need you to get some people together and find rope to tie my wife down to my back. Can you get over your anger at and fear of me to do that?" Her color was still red in the bitter chill of the winter's air. But, after glaring at me for a moment longer, pat Chan on the shoulder next to her and ran off yelling for attention while leaving the fidgeting Sergeant behind.

I rose to my feet and bent my legs to do several pushups to get used to my new center of gravity. Even going so far as to rear up on to my colossal rear legs to jump upwards just to see if I could. With her forelegs overlapping each other across my chest, I was able to extend one of my four legs across the limbs to pin them in place and keep her from moving too much. With some rope, it would have to do.

With Kim's condition stable for the time being and her safely on my back, the siren call of checking on the remainder of the family I had present drew me across the parking lot. Eyes everywhere moved to track me as snouts followed my path to my brother. Scattered throughout the snow-covered industrial complex, lost ones pricked up heads and ears attentively from where they lay on buildings, amongst stands of trees, and from frozen retention ponds. Soon, they were moving to gather around me to seek direction and strength while their raised frills and scales rustled with their edginess.

Alex's dazed eyes looked up into mine as my shadow fell over him. Lowering my head to get a better scent for how he was doing, I sent thoughts of calm and healing to the anxious lost ones following me around with plaintive moans issuing from their long necks. At the same time working to keep my children asleep and monitor Kim while lastly speaking to my brother. Four things at once, Alex never even had a clue that I was doing so much mentally when I spoke to him.

"Alex...I don't...how do you feel? Are you okay?" I started strong but cursed inwardly when I finished so limply that I could barely even hear myself with the huge ears that lay flat and listless to rub against the scales of my head. I didn't even know if he could tell from my body language or smell how badly I felt. Two lost ones next to me made sympathetic cooing noises and stretched their heads out to rub my sides. I returned distracted thoughts of gratitude for the gesture. The sight of his blood shot and unfocused eyes did little to ease my concern for him.

I saw him and the medics flinch out of one eye when I lifted my head away to roar a demand for the one creature that might be able to tell us something useful. The creature that I had noticed had been conspicuously absent from my line of sight since I had staggered from the breached remains of the warehouse where my dearest friend had nearly died.

"Prometheus! Get your fucking ass over here!"

"Uh..." Alex moaned insensibly while clutching at his head when I rashly trumpeted my demand right over top of him. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

"What's wrong with them?" I heard someone ask.

"Dunno." Another voice responded, as Prometheus lowly slunk around the corner of another warehouse at the end of the complex. "Some kind of TBI...but what could have caused it? I've never seen anything like this without a clear indicator of external trauma..."

Those two were left scratching their heads while worriedly tending to my brother and the others who had been too...close to me earlier. My worry only soared to new heights while my chest clenched and forced a high-pitched anxious whine through my narrowly parted jaws. Startling the two examining my sibling nearly as much as myself.

I wanted to do something to fix what I had done. One of the soldiers that had first set out with us screamed and rocked violently. Thing 1 cried out in confusion over why his head hurt so much. Keening in incomprehension at why the light of the day hurt him from where he sheltered beneath Big Bang's wing. Not looking much better herself, she tried to calm him by resting her rumbling throat across his nose to shield him from the world that was dimming as clouds rolled overhead.

The fear of myself was front and center in my mind and stopping me from acting as surely as my nose blocked me from seeing just in front of my head. I had to. I needed everyone ready to fly before I could get Kim the attention she needed. This was not the time to be splitting us up. The first flakes of snow fell from a darkening sky as I came to a decision.

I caused this and I would have to deal with the terror of what I was capable of to at least start to fix it. Taking a big breath in, I felt myself swell before I released the tension keeping my tail held rigidly behind me in a great gust through my flaring nostrils. Taking strength from my wife and our children resting on my back I blinked slowly and turned my head down to my woozy brother.

"Alex...I'm going to try to help you and the others."

"...urgle?"

"Be very careful, Tom. What you are about to attempt is going to test your abilities like nothing yet has."

That was one thing I had to settle before I began. The onetime immortal computer did not flinch when I slammed my head into his to stare into his eyes while my breath rasped angrily from my open mouth. Shouts of alarm came at my sudden act while I got something off my shoulders. At first, I didn't even realize that the pair of arms emerging from my back had raised and spread their attached membranes until I saw the shadow eclipse our two heads. Something that I increasingly realized was a threat display designed to make myself appear larger

"I do not know what part you had in what has happened to Kim today. I do not care either. When Kim is safely being treated, you and I will have words. Do you understand?"

I could feel the scales of his brow and nose shifting against my own with a rustling noise as he nodded wordlessly. His bizarre prismatic eyes never leaving mine until I withdrew my head to look to my brother.

Closing my eyes in concentration, I retracted some of my mind from the lost ones in the area to send new ribbons of thought to those I had injured earlier. The tiny sparks of their thoughts, of their presences, I could pick out among the brightly glowing stars of the much larger individuals nearby. In my mind, I could see that those most affected by me earlier, child of the egg and human alike, had the patterns of their thoughts snarled by what I had done. Unlike the others who had circuits of luminous filaments chasing themselves in unbroken orbits, those who were suffering from my outburst had dark spots hidden behind layers of gossamer strands of thought. It was almost as if I could see the synaptic connections within their brains.

"You can..." Prometheus started, before I shut him up by cutting the side of his snout open with the clawed thumb of my right wing. Not even condescending to open my eyes to see him as I lashed out. I didn't want to deal with his shit right now.

Accompanied by the sound of his rough tongue flicking outward to lick his wound with a resigned sigh, I tried to find something within myself that would help the others.

It was the feeling of my children's heartbeats transmitted through flesh and bone that led me to the answer. When they felt my intention to heal, my desire to assist, transmitted by the workings of my mind in radiating waves their heartbeats grew stronger. Their presences grew stronger inside me.

The chatter of those around me working to understand the situation and to stabilize it so that we could leave fell silent. Movement, other than the sharp thuds of Dan on patrol, fell still. Even those that could not feel the strength of my conscious thought, instinctively knew something was taking place beyond their senses.

My brother was first. Driven by my desire to heal, an ethereal bridge opened between us and I could feel as he did. I felt what ailed him. I understood. A small hemorrhage in his cerebellum, affecting his balance. A spark jumped from him to me, and then back again. I could hear his relieved sigh at the same time I felt his uneasy sense of injury ease. Pain, small and distant, burned in the back of my mind. A tiny angry knotted ball that began to grow as the searchlight of my attention shifted from one wounded to the next. Somehow, I was alleviating their pain by taking it within myself. Or...by dulling it for them. It was, and is, hard for me to describe what I did for them then. But the results were the same. Vitals lowered and stabilized while the effects of earlier abated.

One more outcome that became apparent from my efforts appeared when my attention turned to a huddle of wary lost ones crouched near the opening torn into the warehouse. I could feel the fuzziness of the lost one's minds. Like trying to peer through a filthy pane of glass to catch sight of something that you knew was on the other side. Their minds knew that parts of themselves were missing only to try in vain to discover what that was. Confusion battered my mental probe as their anguished cries to make sense of their realities echoed in the space between my ears.

Eruptions of static came from electronic devices amongst the rescue party followed by surprised shouts. The blaring noise cut off, as each piece of equipment was silenced or disable. I knew it was me. I had shifted into high gear to help these others. The electrical output of my mind grew high enough to induce interference in the electronics nearby. I could see within them that the connections between their conscious minds and who they once were being blocked by that dirty prism. Taking my analogy further, I wiped it clean for them, and braced myself as one after the other were reunited with their lost identities. Memories whipped past that, after learning each intimate memory and feeling increasingly like a vile trespasser, I learned to lower my resistance to so that they could flow past me without registering what they contained. I had learned how to preserve their privacy by letting their thoughts run through my projected mind without interacting. All I had to do, was remove enough of what made me...me, to allow what constituted them to stream like unimpeded water.

Each identity was unlocked, or unblocked, by a different key stolen from the depths of their waking minds. For Chad, who was Thing 1, the smell of the strawberries he had been eating when his skin had begun to turn as black as his fading consciousness. For Pat, the sight of a birthday cake and the flickering of the candles adorning the white frosted rim of the celebratory treat. Their own minds provided the path to rediscovery, I was merely the one that twisted the key in the lock of the gates that barred their ways.

Gasps of wonder, realization. The scent of fear, and shock. All flowed around me in a hurricane of reactionary emotion. The small ones among us reeling in confusion equal to the understanding that grew among the big ones. Driven by my intense desire to heal the others of their concussive injuries from what I was capable of. I had alleviated their injuries by shouldering some of their pain myself. In the process doing more than I had thought possible for the other among us.

"Him, him, and..." I stopped as a shiver of opening scales ran the length of my body to signal my remorse and a plaintive whine came from my throat before I could continue. "...him." My wing finished by pointing at my brother. "Have small hemorrhages in the backs of their heads. Alex, I'm so, so sorry. Please...tell me something here..."

"Could fit the symptoms..." One officer said to another.

"Impossible for him to know! How could..." the second airman countered back, before being cut off by the screams of Pat as the reality of what she had become hit her all at once.

Standing tall on her hind legs with her headed point straight upwards and her jaws locked open in her terrible scream before she crumbled into the waiting arms of Dean. Big Bang, opposite them, nuzzled Chad's neck murmuring soothingly to him as he sat frozen. Holding a wing in between two paws with his eyes and scales opened wide in shock as he struggled to breath. I could feel that she wasn't exactly helping him deal with his new species by talking how wonderful flight felt. A slowly building sense of icy panic was coating his mind that found expression in the physical world as the paws he was holding one of his alien appendages in began to shake.

"Buddy..." My brother croaked, at last answering my plea while I focused on him and silently sought to calm the others. Shielding my anxiety from them all, I was nothing but strength, nothing but understanding, for everyone who was as lost from their circumstances as I was myself.

"...Tom. I don't know what you're doing for me right now... as good as it feels. But you and I both know if I do have intra...intracer...intracerebral hemo...hemorrhaging we need to get to a hospital..."

My heart burned in my chest at hearing him struggle with words that should have flowed off his tongue like water. The view of my surroundings changed as my head turned to look at the camouflage wearing airmen and the security chief with them. Alex was right. Even more desperately than my wife, they needed immediate evaluation.

"We called for local paramedics as soon as we learned that there were wounded humans here." Ackerman said while fending off my anxiously hovering head.

I stared at the lot of them for one minute. That's how long I allotted them to give me something more than 'we called' some unspecified time ago. Vast clouds of heated air curled in the increasingly snowy air as I opened my mouth to tell them we weren't waiting for ground transportation any longer when my ears flared wide.

Sirens. At least two different sets of them.

Heads rose around the area to look in the direction I was facing. Chirped conversations passed over the heads of the small ones as they held their own as I listened while continuing to massage the fractured psyches of Chad and Pat.

"It sure took them long enough! It's a damned good thing we're loaded down with as many MDs as we are! What a Charlie Foxtrot!" Our unnamed security guide exclaimed irately to the world in general after he was told what all the big ones were looking at. My ear twitched to focus on his words, and I chewed them over in my head...

"How long ago did you call them?"

"Forty fucking minutes ago! They didn't say anything about a delay!"

I grunted in thought, still doing five different things in my head. A nagging doubt began to grow as hard lessons learned from my time in the service stirred awake.

"This...this doesn't feel right... I'm going to ask some of the other big ones to check it out."

"...maybe..." The nameless and rankless officer trailed off apprehensively before speaking into his radio. Soon, Dan returned from the far end of the complex where he was sitting looking down another access road with large bounds that shook the ground. Eating up the hundreds of meters that were between us, he stomped to a stop and cocked his head with an unvoiced question emanating from bristling scales. He and his passenger got new orders from the security liaison that man was sure he wasn't going to be stepped on.

Listening as Dan and his crew member were told to meet the oncoming ambulances away from the main group, I gave instruction to the two lost ones and Joey who all crept towards me at my hawk-like cry for attention with heads lowered to scrape the ground and eyes cast upward. I can't say that I liked the reverence they were looking at me and my mate with one bit, but it was not the time to sort out a new form of social hierarchy. That was for damn sure.

Kim shifted on my back when my wings flared to flap in dismissal to the three who burst into flight and headed towards the distant sirens. Tensing my left shoulder to shift my wife back into position between my dorsal limbs.

The three that I had sent off to check on the incoming emergency vehicles came wheeling back with their expansive wingspans stark across the gray sky. A gust of wind swirled around me and the snow shower briefly intensified as we all heard the report that only some of us could make out.

"Not stop! No make funny talk noise with us! Gold Stalker get close and be friendly. Loud bright rolling things try hit Gold Stalker! Not like angry box!"

"This isn't right." I told everyone, adding the details of what the lookouts had said to the small ones.

"Start getting the wounded onto three that have the modular transports." The security chief stepped in between my rumbled comments. "Can they tolerate flight ma'am?" He asked, directing the question at Ackerman. She opened her mouth to answer, and I bent my head to address Virginia who sat towering next to me.

We ran out of time.

Dan roared an endless thundering warning before the whirring of a minigun spooling up made its way to us. The singular 'brrrrrt' unique to that weapon as it unleashed its hellfire at something unseen came next and then Dan's wings appeared above the buildings and the trees next to him as he launched into the sky.

I saw the flash of light, and then shock front of the terrific explosion catching Dan's wings and throwing him high into the air. Trees pulped into countless shards and flimsy sheet metal buildings flew apart in the face of the insurmountable force. Rushing outwards in fractions of a second the blast washed over us with a roar louder than anything I'd heard since the war. The world grew muffled as something in my ears ruptured and I once again felt warm fluid running down the sides of my head.

Fear lanced through me for my exposed wife on my back, protecting me with her own body when I thought I had been safeguarding her. With no further time to react, I surged forward and used my size to blanket the small ones before me from the debris that was just now returning to earth.

A shadow, even greater than my own, fell across me and my wife both as Virginia formed the greatest shield of all above us. Her thick scales, and toughened wing membranes, turning aside most of the flying shrapnel. Looking beneath the edge of her wing and between two of the fingernails extending from her fingers to brush cleared frozen ground I could see pieces of the buildings and trees nearest the blast impact all around the protective umbrella.

With dull thuds against her body, Virginia stoically bore the abuse she was suffering and only when fragments of the VBIED began to pierce her wings and scales did she react. I couldn't hear her snarls, but I could see the ruins of her snout twist in agony, feel her superheated breath splash against my shoulder, and smell her pain.

Reaching out to her, I stole her pain and made it my own to relieve her of the consequences of her selfless act. Jagged lightning rippled along my spine, where I could feel how twisted and heated metal had slashed her alongside her backbone and tore her fin to ribbons. The tendons connecting my jaws groaned in protest as I clenched them against the pain until I was able to dissipate it across countless neural connections to distribute the angry impulses. By the time I was done, the sensory inputs were mere whispers of what they should have been. The only evidence of their former severity was left in the aching of my jaws.

A sharp keening whistle of pain and terror came from a child of the egg outside the shelter of our protector. The terrible cry was cut off suddenly with a grinding crash before something heavy thudded into part of Virginia's wing, the mass denting her covering membrane. The vibrations of others, both large and small, groaning where they contacted my scales told me that they were mostly alive. But I had to be sure, as another thrill of panic swept through me, and I shot to my feet so swiftly that Virginia was thrown to the side where she lay gaping like a fish and struggling to regain her breath.

Not that her, or I, or any of us were afforded the opportunity to do something as mundane as get our bearings. The degenerates that had planned this attack knew their business, making me wonder if they were trained in some fashion, and pressed the attack. These were tactics that I knew all too well, being well versed in them myself.

"Kim! Brother!" My panicked screech shot through the air and my deadened sense of hearing only to be joined by more shouts from the direction of the main road. Obscured from me by the tall trees lining the entryway of the industrial complex and the swirling snowfall, rallying cries were given as the attack renewed.

"Kill them! Kill them all! For America!" A women's voice yelled through the public address speaker mounted on a police cruiser that rammed its way through debris blocking the road. Whipping into a sliding stop, two people exited the squad car and began firing with semi-automatic shotguns at Big Bang. Three trucks covered in plate steel and with makeshift armored turrets in the beds came next and began spreading outwards amongst the parking lots into wide set positions. The three improvised weapons platforms spaced out a hundred meters apart added their voices to the opening of the battle at those of us overhead.

Screams of anguish from alien and human throats rang into the deadening effects of the snow fall coming from the heavens. The concussive blasts of three 50cal M2 heavy machine guns added to the hellish atmosphere as the truck gunners tried to track what they thought were the most dangerous targets. A dozen small caliber rifles, the shrill piercing noise of what was likely 5.56mm, broke through my abused hearing. I saw muzzle flashes from moving figures wearing white camouflage that rushed through the trees to throw themselves into depressions to evade return fire.

Holding her wings out protectively to her sides, presenting an easy target for the two gunmen wearing police uniforms, Big Bang hid a terrified Joey and confused Chad. Hissing her rage with extended fins at the two squaring off with her, she shrugged off the slugs impacting her wings and threw a section of building paneling at them in return. Her preferred method of attack, I dryly noted given what I knew of her, but an effective one at short range for us.

The slab of debris crushed their car and prevented them from firing further as they ducked the assault. But it also hid them, and they used the opportunity to direct the actions of what came next.

My stomach clenched at the cowardice of what I did as soon as the first rogue cops opened fire. But if anyone had ever dared call me one for thinking of my pregnant wife that I was carrying I would have lost my damned temper. The lost ones exploded into flight in fear in all directions at the sound of the initiating explosion to circle overhead. A thought and a plea from me formed their mindless escape into purpose to find cover for my wife and the small ones.

Another ambulance came roaring up the tree lined driveway and halted, allowing the driver to exit after fiddling with the steering wheel for a moment as the engine began to race. The vehicle lurched away in a straight line and I felt burning blood coarse up my throat when I shouted a warning to Pat, Dean, and four military little ones with them.

The security liaison ran from my shadow, past Virginia just getting her feet beneath herself, and up Dan's limp and unconscious form laying in the ruins of the building he had crushed in his fall. The minigun mounted at the base of Dan's neck that the small one ran towards was unmanned, the gunner beyond my ability to detect and probably dead, and raised uselessly into the sky. Reaching the weapon, he quickly checked the belt feed, and housing, for damage before pointing the weapon at the ambulance.

Pat and Dean hadn't had time to gather the cohabitants of their protective shelter and instead hunkered down with wings spread to form a canopy much like Virginia had done earlier. But with I knew to be a likely car bomb running flat out towards them I did not expect it to be enough. The minigun began sending streaks of tracers towards the front of the vehicle still better than two hundred meters away. The man knew his work and after shredding the right front tire the sudden change in steering input caused the vehicle borne improvised explosive device to veer hard right into a ditch that it bounced across with doors flying open.

"Get down! Get down! Land! Land!" I howled urgently, again spitting blood, before the ambulance detonated. A ball of smoke and burst of flame when the MOGAS caught enveloped the automobile as trees tore apart like matchsticks. The second of the deafening blasts washed over us big ones at the same time the small ones were floored by the force of the shock front. A little female, who had touched down at my warning but not yet furled her wings, was caught unaware and screamed in abject terror when her wings filled with the blast. Flung off her hands and feet, she cartwheeled into a small maintenance shack uncontrolled. Rolling and tumbling across frozen lawn and parking lot alike, by the time she had slid to a stop she had left a long smear of blood from a rent wing across the once pristine snow.

"Daddy! Daddy! I hurt! I hu-hu-hurt!"

Her broken sobbing wails drew cries of dismay and attempts at comfort from the overhead children of the egg. To my own horror, I immediately had to tamp down on wild flares of emotion from the adolescent female as memories of her father picking her up after crashing on her first bicycle ride began to ricochet back and forth in my head. I blinked back tears at the sensation of phantom pain from a life that wasn't my own. The feeling of him kissing the boo-boo on her elbow the last thing I picked up from her before I could slam the connection shut to leave her private memories just that. Mentally, I wrapped myself around her to provide that sense of paternal love that she sought so desperately, but could not find, to soother her. Her screams gradually ebbed although her writhing did not as a forgotten life crashed down on her waking mind to add to the turmoil produced by her pain. A fatal distraction that I didn't need as I tried to coordinate the response with all those who could sense my intentions.

The flock of airborne children of the egg above me split apart and dove. Most towards me, one towards each one of us downed or injured. Including a group of small ones leaning against each other and running pell-mell for cover before they were scooped up by the wing of a smaller male as he thundered past them.

The pickup trucks were busily trading fire with the gunner on what I felt was the blearily awakening Dan. At Big Bang's encouragement, Joey, and Chad, both threw concrete parking berms at the trucks that badly battered the plate steel welded to their sides.

"What the fuck are you doing airmen! Open fucking fire! Give the wounded cover!" The nameless serviceman yelled from Dan's back as he shifted beneath him and began to rise while shaking his head and moaning. All the other servicemembers that could, to varying degrees of effectiveness, returned fire with their M9 side arms. Which if nothing else exposed the thinness of the training of those firing on us when some began to realize that this was not a video game when bullets started whizzing past their ears. Shouts of fear from some of the gunmen were music to my ears and a handful from the dismount teams cut and ran floundering through the snow back the way they came.

Four lost ones slammed into the ground around me and threw up their wings to conceal Kim on my back as I ran towards the far end of the compound to safety. Before I began my sprint, I saw out of the very bottom right corner of my vision, far beneath my head on the ground, my brother and the other initial casualties. One of the operators with blood still leaking from his eye was laying down effective fire through his short-range optic at the dismounts bounding forward to set up another line of attack. Providing cover for his still insensible mates that he was kneeling among. Red steaming blood splashed onto snow and a camouflaged attacker screamed as he grabbed at his shoulder and fell. The lost one on my right scooped up our injured with one of his wings bent downward like a living snowplow as we galloped on. I picked up my brother, feeling his tiny hands clutch mine, and thudded along on three legs and feeling the weight of Kim's fat ass with every step.

I swore when this was over with, we were going to have a talk about how often she ate entire elks.

Spinning behind an intact metal shop with a brick outer wall, that I saw was full of machinery and perfect for hiding behind after a quick peek inside through the damaged roof, I shucked Kim's head from atop mine so that it fell to the ground out of sight behind the wall. I winced at the clacking noise of her teeth clashing with each other from the multi-meter fall but could spare no concern for her comfort at the moment.

Dan! Dan! Stay down! Keep your head down! Do not open your eyes, you will make it worse!

I took the image of what I saw in front of Dan and projected it into his mind. A confused feeling of bemusement and acknowledgement returned on the same channel. His attempt to rise stilled as the revolving cannon on his back whined on and on. Rounds pinged by the hundreds off the steel cages of the trucks, blowing out tires and shattering reinforced windows. Two of the three trucks were hissing white steam from perforated radiators before the weapon ran dry and the gunner dropped prone onto Dan's spine. Tapping his shoulder, he pointed at something Dan could not see, but I could from the view of someone aloft.

What this? Whispered to me, as the one who thought of himself as Noisy Teeth felt me sharing his sight. I sent him reassurance and the image of me looking around through a pair of binos as a half-assed explanation. I did not even understand myself how I was able to do what I was and with such overwhelming speed and concurrence, so I didn't have much to offer him about what I was doing. Relaying what I saw to Dan, I directed him to his left where he was able to crouch down, with some difficulty, behind what remained of a cinder block building front. Behind cover once more, the man on Dan's spine popped up again to reload the chaingun.

Big Bang roared in pain as bullets a half inch in diameter began to impact her from only a couple of hundred meters. Each shot hitting her was followed by a cracking sound as individual scales shattered under the onslaught of lead. Enraged by the pain eating away at her, the once mild-mannered chemist, an image of a plump woman of middling years staring forlornly at a growing pile of papers on a desk just outside of a lab, lashed out at one of her attackers. Pirouetting with deadly grace, she spun on one leg with her hindquarters and tail raised high in a move that left her dangerously exposed for a moment. Before all the force of gravity and her own immense strength brought her thickly muscled tail down through the giant acrobatic leap on the right most truck. In an instant, the truck's frame bent like a twig as the structure of the vehicle folded like a book around her spinal extension and the asphalt beneath cratered from the impact.

Fire broke out in the remains of the truck and the driver of the vehicle, the lone survivor, screamed as the flames began to lick at the passenger cabin. Begging for help he didn't deserve as burning ammunition began to explode in random directions and plink off the plate steel, the survivor was saved by a stroke of luck. The remains of the vehicle stuck to Big Bang's tail as she hurried Joey and Chad towards my position with strident chirps and nips at their own tails while she unconcernedly toted the vehicle behind her. With a deft flick of her tail just beyond our shelter of a declined loading ramp for the small ones she flung the ruined truck to the side where it crashed into a depression full of snow. The fire guttered out and left the living occupant of the wreck safe for the moment as he continued to beg for rescue.

If we all lived through this, he might even get his wish, I thought watching as a line of bullet strikes chased Big Bang behind the wall of the building with her head lowered out of sight of the gun trucks. Her hind legs collapsed with a pained yelping cry from her panting mouth as tears of agony ran from her eyes while she looked back at the blood pulsing from scores of entry wounds. Her two shadows, Chad and Joey, whined piteously at the sight of the one who literally had taken them under her wings as she gasped and writhed on the ground in misery. One of the doctors was making attempts to reach her rear legs and haunches to see to her injuries but was unable to make it past Big Bang's cracking tail whips that battered the wall she was next to.

Uncurling my front leg, I gently set my brother down next to my wife's head as I settled my belly and chest to the cold cement of the ramp area in a protective curl around the casualty collection point. Beckoning the lost ones to me, they fluttered to climb next to me and on top, most of them younger and smaller, with their claws clicking against hard scale as they settled to build the shelter that I was the foundation for. A quick mental check of my children, my mate, and my brother told me there was nothing more I could do for them at the moment. Turning my gaze and snout from them to assess the warzone that only three minutes earlier had been a situation just getting under control.

Virginia had crept alongside Dan behind their crumbling wall as a pair of anti-aircraft weapons continued to open larger and larger divots in the construction. On her way she must have grabbed the unconscious Prometheus by the neck and drug him with her after the second explosion had sent flying debris crashing into his head. He lay prostrate and senseless on the ground next to Virginia, and I snorted in grim amusement at the thought that he lay injured by a sequence that could be traced directly back to events he had helped orchestrate. Such as me, my wife, and my daughter having our spines triple in proportionate length at the same time we lost the goodwill of a sizeable fraction of the human race.

Dean was sheltering Pat behind a small rise of land with a pavilion and picnic benches at its summit. I saw through his eyes that he was looking down at her head, that she had clutched in her hands, and screamed wordlessly in distress. The torrent of tumbling thought pouring from her mind told me it was a combination of the fact that she had become what she called one of those lizard people and the fact that she had awoken in the middle of a gun battle. Between the two of them, three more small ones huddled, clutching their semi-automatic pistols, and blaring their siren like mental alarm.

Of Jack, Jill, and Arnold, I saw nothing, nor did anyone else. Casting about with my mind it did not take me long to find them. A jittery image of the ground far below an empty minded Jack clasped within a pair of young paws. The single-minded focus of the owner of those infantile paws in accomplishing getting away from the scary noises that my...Jack's egg mother had instructed to avoid at all costs. Lastly the ball of rage, of absolute soul searing, blistering, rage that lie in wait within the building that lay half collapsed around her. Jill, who latched onto my thought probe the moment she felt it touch her mind and sent me one thought in return.

I protect Matriarch and Patriarch! No harm!

Behind her anger, I saw the despair that was the source of it. Memories of months feeling disjointed, knowing that she wasn't always the way she is. The helplessness she felt when Arnold had returned to her one day with a bullet hole in his wing and the fruitless search for vengeance that left her unfulfilled. Fleeing further into the wilderness only to be driven by her growing fatigue from a lack of food to seek out their hide-away in the warehouse full of what I only then realized where sacks of corn that they had been eating away at through the winter.

Her question to me let me know all I needed about her next actions. Either I could direct her on when to attack, or she would decide for herself using what she could see through the hole in the ruins she lay within. I felt her focus sharpen on movement through her spy hole and knew it was time for her to act.

"Eat this, you fucking aliens!" A man shouted and stood up to throw a small cylinder that shot sparks from a safety fuze at one end. A homemade grenade. The aim of him and his squad moving around the periphery, Pat, Dean, and the scared airmen between their bodies.

The two cops, still under the cover of the wall that Big Bang had thrown at them, yelled at the rest of the squad not to follow the overzealous attacker's lead and instead provide cover fire. 9 mm rounds impacted the snow around them with tiny puffs as the rest of the idiots stood up to throw their own grenades and completely ignore the orders shouted at them by the ring leaders. They began to holler their insipid hollers standing in full view during a fire fight, showcasing just how inept they ultimately were. None of those attacking us were soldiers. These were nothing more than pissed off civilians that someone had filled the heads of with ideas that were going to get them killed.

"I lost my job!"

"My family is homeless now!"

"This is for America!"

"For my God, my country, and my race!"

"You don't belong! Fuck you, and all the other filth in my nation!"

They all screamed their battle cries, grabbing the small lanyards glued to the ends of all-weather matches to set the fuzes burning. Then faltered, unsure of what they just heard, to identify the source of a sound loud enough to drown out the twin M2 machine guns and the GAU-17/A minigun trading fire.

Jill had made her move, the battle was over, even if those attacking us didn't know death was moments away for most of them.

Launching herself through the ruins of her hiding place, whole sections of roof and wall alike exploded outwards in the direction of the attacking force. Scattering them all, but not before the first grenade arced away towards the overwhelmed Pat and Dean who watched the soaring grenade. Jill spun, and her lashing tail smacked the pipe bomb towards its thrower with enough force to knock him off his feet before it exploded. Red vapor and torn limbs rained on down on his allies as they collapsed after being struck by pieces of the fragmenting cast iron.

There was no further Hollywood or HBO style roaring of challenges from Jill, just a one-sided blood bath made all the more eerie by the near lack of noise from the hulking female. Taken by surprise from a new unmonitored angle, the first squad that she came across was the one still reeling from the grenade exploding in their midst. Jill ruthlessly stomped the life out of all them, making them pay for being too close together, as she pounded through their position on towards her real objective. The gunner in the turret was still cranking his weapon around when Jill arrived. A leap boosted by a quick flutter of her wings allowed Jill to come down on the truck with terrible force, flattening it to the ground with a metallic shriek. Cries from within silenced forever as blood mingled with oil and coolant to run from within the wreckage.

"Retreat! Retreat!" Screamed the rogue policewoman leading the attack. "Don't forget...Fuck! Cover each other! You spineless chickenshits! Cover each other! Get into the trees! Disperse!"

Whatever she had been hoping for in a tactical withdrawal was not to be as the angry but ill trained militia scattered without thought for anyone but themselves. Showing as little concern for their fellows as they did for the innocents that they attacked. It was, I knew, symptomatic of the type of people we could expect hostilities from. Fools who thought they were fighting for the right side of history and instead played right into the worst expectations of the aliens. They who expected little more than the barbarism shown here and would erase us all from existence if the fight for an impossible return to the status quo crossed an invisible threshold.

"Fuck!" The policewoman screamed again and pulled out of the back seat of her cruiser a trump card to give everyone else time to retreat. An M136 AT-4 recoilless rifle. "Go!" She ordered her partner, who took off running alongside the last remaining gun truck which fired over its rear bumper at Jill who dove in alternating rolling leaps from side to side while she advanced on the retreat. An agile target that proved impossible to hit with such a primitive T&E mechanism. With practiced chops of her hands, the policewoman opened the sights and disengaged the safeties before checking behind her to make sure her partner was clear.

Jill, focused on the gun truck, was contemptuous of the small human that I felt her dismiss as a threat. I sent a warning to her of the danger she was in from the weapon on the women's shoulder and saw her vision flash as she whipped her head to the policewoman.

"There is only one God, and he is not an alien!" She yelled at Jill and fired.

It was funny really, that she thought she was going to hit such an agile target. Seeing the direction the tube was pointed at, Jill had only to crouch to press her chest to the ground and the projectile streaked down the length of her spine to slam into a parked car behind her. The vehicle exploded into the air causing Jill to yowl in alarm and spin to face the explosion with her wings open to shield her head. Giving the remaining attackers exactly what they needed, the time to escape. Blinded by the explosion, Jill was momentarily stunned and the rest of us were either wounded or carrying others that were. The policewoman threw down the spent launch tube and ran after the rest, but we couldn't let her go. We needed to find out where the training and the weapon had come from.

Jill must hunt! Catch but not kill! Bring with! I sent to Jill, asking her to capture the leader before she could escape. Jill's head stretched out with her dazzled eyes closed and swung until she locked on to a scent that I confirmed was the one we needed. With one coil of her powerfully flexed hind legs, she leapt the distance between them, overshooting her target. Following her nose around, her hand darted outwards to curl long fingers around the policewoman and she hobbled back to me to present her prize. To my chagrin she did it with her head lowered like the captive was a damn offering to me.

"Let...let the fuck go of me! You fucking animals! You mother fucking animals! You will all burn do you hear me? Our rights are given by god and he will not accept you into his kingdom!"

It was over, but there was no time to rest. The number of wounded we had had just multiplied and we no longer knew what kind of response would arrive from with the sirens in the distance.

"Dan, Virginia, Big Bang, Jill, can you fly? If you cannot, follow us on the ground, we need to get to the hospital. Carry as many of the small ones as you can. We leave in three minutes."

"Everyone! ABCs! Is anyone critical?" I waited until a hasty assessment of everyone was redone. Three had gunshots to extremities, ten had shrapnel wounds, and a dozen with concussion symptoms. "Plug their wounds and save the room in the shelters for the wounded! Everyone else, pick a child of the egg for transport! We fly now for the hospital! No more waiting! Move!"

To add motivation to my orders, I sent out a wave of emotional urgency strong enough to drive everyone into a frenzy that reflected my dire estimation of our situation. The sight of the ground and the underside of Kim's chin grew close as I wove my head beneath hers to support it once again. Snaking my neck around, I asked my brother how he was doing with my wife's head perched upon mine like a macabre hat.

"Alex...are you good? Do you...can you ride in my hands or do you want to be on my back? Brother...I want...I want you near me."

"Thrrrreee exp...losions is too many..." He slurred at me, trying to reach out to pat the rounded tip of my nose. Instead, flapping his hand in the air half a meter to my left. My brother was coming with me. Protective instincts screamed at me that no family of mine would be out of my sight in this condition.

"Patriarch...I mean...T...om? Tom? Tom, where my child? Where egg mate? Find my new hatch! Family! Please? I...Jill...me Jill beg!" Jill whined beseechingly with her head bowed and tail curled snugly alongside her. Searching, I found Arnold almost at the limit of my ability (all of a kilometer or two I think) perched in a tall tree and out of sight. I felt his tail curled around the branch he sat on with his blank father clutched between his two fore paws as he nuzzled at him in a tearful search for reassurance after being so frightened. The sadness of the baby almost sent me spinning into a tornado of instinctual actions at the thought that there was a youngling out there somewhere in distress. Focusing on what I was trying to accomplish helped keep the still new and frighteningly powerful effects of the instincts at bay. In my mind's eye, I pictured the wings of Jill reaching out for her family to draw them close and used my ability to connect her to her child.

His head jerked upwards and looked around in confusion for the warmth and smell of his mother that he sensed. Unable to see her, his uncomprehending longing made his tears increase in volume and he made a sad crooning noise that made my heart leap in my chest.

Here little one. Come to your mother. I sent to him. Her love and worry a beacon to attract him back to the safety of her welcoming embrace. The feeling of wind on my face, and the release of scales from around itchy sticky wood told me he was on his way. Jill cried joyfully when the young child's black wings appeared through the snow and slipped into her encircling hold with Jack along for the ride.

There was a loud bang as the sirens stopped some distance away. Likely not wanting to come any closer to such a savage gun battle involving heavy weapons, although that bang might have had something to do with it as well. Not that I could blame them, they were first responders not the damn army. The loud bang was followed by several pops, muffled by the weather, that nevertheless sounded like small arms fire to me. Whatever the case may have been it kept the police from coming in closer. Which was frankly for the best, as with each report the children of the egg all around, lost or not, jumped with wings raised aggressively and hissing noises coming from their opened mouths.

Mental fatigue was beginning to creep in on me harshly as I was taxed in a way that I'd never had experience with before when I once more settled everyone's frayed nerves with gentle nudging. My eyes burned as I was reminded that the one who I could share that comfort with was limply sprawled down the length of my back. Her beautiful mind, taken from me, with only a faint glimmer to remind that she was still whole.

Pushing against the ground, I rose and shook out each of my legs and then my tail before twisting it along the length of my wife's to trap hers in place and keep it from upsetting my flight. I took stock to see if everyone was ready and then curled my head around, stretching even my new serpentine abilities to their limit, to sniff at Kim's bandaged stump folded between us for new bleeding.

"Someone give my brother a blanket, I'm going to put him between him and my wife for the flight out of here." I ordered a startled group of small ones who were on the verge of breaking down now that their first likely exposure to combat was over. Now was not the time for that. Dealing with the unexpected could wait till the hospital.

"Standby!" The still unnamed security chief yelled from Dan's back. Trying to keep his footing as his gargantuan ride swayed woozily. He talked a few more minutes on the satellite phone he was using before pressing the mouthpiece against his shoulder and shouting a new question. "Where is Staff Sergeant Morales? She was the one in this harness on Mr. Robertson's shoulders."

He reached down and picked up something that I recognized as being a harness just like the one he was wearing. The one he shook in his hand however, had three broken buckles, likely from the blast that had knocked Dan out of the sky, and was noticeably missing the warm body that should have been wearing it. A point of failure that I'd be sure to bring to the attention of those at the airport.

"We're not leaving until she is accounted for, dead or alive! I don't give a damn how badly you're leaking! Some of you are in no danger of running out of blood any time soon!"

"Jill knows! Jill see broken human land!" The muscular female chirruped loudly. With a nudge of the side of her neck, Arnold sunk his claws into his mother's scales and held on to her and his father while she set them safely on her back. Then trotting off to one of the many destroyed structures in the area she poked her nose at it for a moment. With delicate movements of one of her hands, she shifted the debris and then lifted a half-collapsed wall for a moment to pluck out what was obviously a body with two talons.

Giving Staff Sergeant Morales the respect she deserved as she was carried into the shelter on Big Bang's back, I bowed my head and everyone else copied my solemn gesture. The palpable shock of the small ones was broken as the larger of us joined the lost ones in a brief keening wail at the slate gray sky. The reactive display leaving me as confused and frightened by the urges of my strange body as ever.

The whole situation appalled me really. Countrymen attacking countrymen in open conflict. Was this what it felt like in 1861? Was that where we were headed? How many more would die because we were being torn between the world of yesterday and tomorrow. How many would the computers accept before we had gone too far?

Did they really know how stubborn humanity could be?

Dan, his wing joints badly sprained from catching the blast wave and telling me just how strong the limbs were, was earthbound by his injuries. But with the security chief on his back (I refuse to dive into minds unnecessarily for bullshit reasons, so I still didn't know his name.) manning a minigun and in contact with the police outside the area I had little to worry as we would circle overhead. I picked up from the conversation that was had over the phone with the PD that they were under fire from a sniper and that small IEDs had disabled two of their cruisers.

I figured we could help them out on the way out of here. Telling Delta Dan (The fucking smartass, doesn't that joke ever get old?) that we could help the cops help us. I directed four, one with my dear wife's snow packed and wrapped hand, to help me aloft. Happy that Alex was wrapped in a pair of mylar blankets to stave off shock. I opened some scales around him to vent body heat to keep him warm in what was promising to be a frigid flight for him.

There might have been times in my life I've had to try harder to lift something. But I couldn't remember when at that moment. The immense pulling sensation of the simpler yet sturdier arrangement of chest and upper back muscles (I didn't really know what to call the muscles that I used to know the proper names for anymore) made nerves flare brightly in my mind as tendons running along each finger of my flight arms stretched and bowed to flare their attached wings. Quick test flaps to settle Kim's bulk and Alex's position in the valley where everything attached to my spine left me ready to go.

I sent a quick picture of what I wanted the four circling my head to do if I started to fall and then a verbal warning to everyone to cover their eyes. Just like doing an Olympic lift, I imagined myself exploding through the motion. I felt the cold seep between scales as the pressure I exerted pressed icy water through normally watertight crevices. The feeling of the rough asphalt parking lot beneath its blanket of snow registered all the long ways back on my extended spine as my thickly muscled tail and rear legs pushed me into the air.

A barking growl of effort rose up my neck, accompanied by a ribbon of blood leaking over my rigid bottom lip, and my wings came down with a powerful stroke that instantly cleared all the snow from the ground beneath me into wild swirls. I sank briefly as my wings contracted to return to a raised position before another flap brought me a tad bit higher. Eventually, once I had cleared the tops of the trees, I was able to make a full articulation and was safe from Kim dragging me back to the ground.

Two of the four I had tasked swooped beneath me and I felt their backs beneath the scales of my hands. Compressing my legs against my body they both used the feeling I projected of my beat to match it and keep from fouling each other's wings and pushed me higher into an air current that helped me along.

Dean, accompanied by the other two who saw that their help wasn't needed, landed on rooftops overlooking the cops outside the battle and bunkered down behind their vehicles. One cop shouted to Dean and pointed at a cruiser with a growing engine fire. A victim of an explosion of some kind judging by the hood that was blown upwards and half the front end laying five meters away where it should have been. A man lay next to it, and I couldn't tell if he was alive. More shots pinged against a cruiser and a young female (A is for Abby and awesome, which I am!) yelped when a bullet struck the neon sign just below her, producing a loud crackle as it shorted out.

My ears twitched back and forth as more gunfire came from my right as I circled above. Abby took up a game of baiting them for reasons that baffled me (Can't hit me, can't hurt me!) but it gave me a chance to pinpoint where the fire was coming from. Directing Dean towards the three shooters, the older male rocketed past me into a large bushy area with snow weighing heavily on upper branches. He screamed, his revulsion rocking my mind, and vomited in front of himself when he accidentally landed right on one of the hidden snipers. It was the grisliest ketchup packet I'd ever seen explode. What the other two I could see through Dean's eyes, along with metallic taste of his stomach bile, did was hard to pick out in the flurry of snow that his landing caused but it ended with them both in his left paws.

At first, they wouldn't let go of their rifles, and tried to bring them down where they could fire on the head of the male clutching them. The two women shrieked in agony when Dean squeezed with the tiniest exertion and I felt through his paw as ribs in each of the attackers gave under the strain. Dean demanded again they disarm and without a thought or hesitation both cast their arms away.

I signaled to the grounded injured that all was safe as long as they stayed off the road and away from whatever potential IEDs that might remain. A train of titans wound their way through the tree stand separating the industrial complex from the road as officers ran to their downed partner for first aid.

Steve had a quick yelled exchange with the cops, and a shelter toting Virginia knelt to allow four medics to descend from her back with a stretcher and collect the wounded patrolman who I could see was still breathing through the ancient gargantuan female's eyes. Aloft, a young male continued to orbit alongside myself, tiny Arnold, and Jill who had placed herself slightly below us to shield us from the ground. After another exchange to prove that we were the ones that were attacked with the evidence of the myriad of wounded pounding away at my mind with their pain we had an escort for the grounded children of the egg with us. I continued to labor away above with many others that I mentally asked to spread out before and behind us to relay what they saw to Steve below me.

Huffing, I rolled my eyes up to look at my unconscious mate. "We're going to have to have a talk about this whole 'females being bigger than males' business when you come back to me." To add insult to injury, I felt our female children awaken to assault me with tiny pinpricks of indignant emotion. Great...our daughters will be their mother's children. Can't wait for the fireworks of three more firebreathers just like her butting heads with each other.

Dan moved out with Prometheus on his back behind the manned chain gun while being accompanied by Chad, Joey, and two lost ones. Big Bang was beneath me and hovering protectively above her charges much to the worry of those in the shelter on her back that she was too close to the ground. She refused to climb higher, but neither could she walk. I could see even from where I was above her, she didn't have the strength in her hind legs to keep them tucked after heavy machine gun fire had strafed them. If she had been younger, with presumably thinner scales, I don't know if she would even have legs.

Sadly, she wasn't the only one severely wounded. Not a flap of a wing, nor the step of a weary paw, went by where there wasn't an accompanying hiss or stifled moan of pain. One of the worst to hear, as I flew slowly above Joey, was the young female who had been thrown by the second bomb across the industrial complex. Not that I needed to hear her when I was the one comforting her with the feeling of my presence as I held her in an ethereal embrace.

The snow provided perfect cover for us and eliminated sight of all of us overhead. Which was both good and bad from a tactical viewpoint, as we reduced our presence but also left the most injured of us to ground attack. The show of force of over a dozen children of the egg hovering only a few hundred meters overhead was lost in the storm. The sound of flapping wings all that was detectable of the armada above the column of injured who stomped through city streets splattering blood on pristine snow and snarling what little vehicle traffic there was.

Although luckily, my cynical mind supplied, the world wasn't so far gone that for one of us large ones to walk in public didn't invite immediate gunfire. Which I sensed was a staggering relief to everyone in our parade as most were still reeling from the mindless carnage we'd just been subjected to. It was also good we had the police escort to clear the road ahead of the land bound children of the egg. Your average motorist isn't used to seeing legs that were meters tall come crashing down one after the other in sets of four as we trotted along. No one wanted to be the cause of an accident in the inclement weather after all and something that size of a tree appearing in the road could certainly instigate that.

I could feel General Boyd's irritated mind far before I could hear his rumbling voice break through the curtains of snow like a whale's low frequency bellow. I saw Angelica through his sight, before he detected my connection and his mind worried at the odd intrusion like a puppy with a coiled spring door stop. The curious probing of his mind changed to hostility, and I saw the hospital administrator recoil in fear when he snarled angrily at realizing that I was latched on to him. Not terribly surprised that he was pissed about what I was doing, I acknowledged his indignation and shrugged off his attacks to push me from his mind to relay how close we were to him and a rundown of all our wounded's injuries. After showing him and then branching out to show the dim, small, mind of Angelica a picture of every injury I had seen, I closed the connection to them both. Leaving them behind with an apology and a small nudge to correct the disorientation that I knew it would cause.

Ethical qualms bounced across my mind like flustered rabbits. I did not want to use it one bit beyond what I had to, but these were desperate times and I wasn't going to waste time arguing my way past the obstinacy I had felt in Angelica's mind. All that being said...I no longer felt as badly as I once might have thought I would about what I had done. Arctic wind bit at my skin as insulating scales rippled uneasily along my huge length. Appreciation for what Kim and I could do was slow to develop but substantial when it came. There were no defenses against our ability. The only control was us.

It was an awe-inspiring amount of responsibility.

Before everyone else reached the hospital, I moved to the front of the group with the accompanying swarm of lost ones fussing over Kim and myself. Yelling loudly for everyone to clear my path, I locked my wings out and glided in to make an easy transition to jogging my momentum off across a long access road next to the hospital. Turning swiftly, I raced back to the entrance of the emergency annex and the gaggle of small ones there looking up at me with fear across their faces and heavy in their scents. Laying down, I beckoned them to quickly take Alex for treatment after I told them what I believed was wrong with him. Kim, I nudged my wing beneath her arm and guided it out and down so that the bandage could be removed. An effort was made at making the treatment more stable than the field expedient one already in place.

I made arrangements (demanded really) for an attempt to be made in reattaching her severed limb. It took all my will power to fight off my growing fatigue for what I was still doing for the others, absorbing the painful signals of misfiring nerves, and was getting increasingly snappy with incredulous medical staff. I began to break down the steps needed, as I saw it, to complete my system of demands for my mate while also flaring an ear and cocking my head to witness what happened behind me.

The police escort entered and circled the sparsely used parking lot before stopping to block the entrance. Dan and the others stepped over them to enter the cordoned area and settle to the cold snow-covered tarmac with heaving groans. Wounds reopened in the walk or flight over stained the snow black as the rest landed in any way that best spared their injuries. Big Bang dropped the still squirming commander from the attack as she was landing. From oh...about three meters, which was about the best she could manage before her crash landing took out a row of shrubs and an unlit light pole. Spinning on the snow, Big Bang came to rest on her belly with her legs splayed to the four points of the compass and head and tail sticking straight out. Remaining still, she whined huskily in pain as her passengers unloaded from the shelter on her back, many of them walking wounded themselves.

Some of the cops present, not knowing the situation, reacted angrily at seeing one of their own so roughly abused and drew down on the large female painting the ground in blood after her sliding crash landing. She snorted dismissively at them and bent her body to lick at her wounds like an injured dog after the last one down the slope of her rib cage hit the ground. Between licks she gave them a piece of her mind.

"Big Bang be gentle as bitch cop deserve. Lucky not play maybe catch in sky above! Big Bang not see well in snow. Maybe see insides when she splat!"

The former human finished with the graphic reproduction of the sound of a body slamming into the earth. Snapping bones and grisly squelching noises being more than I wanted to hear at the moment. Steve yelled at them to drop their weapons from his place on Dan's shoulder, but the police officers seemed more inclined to shoot at the sight of one of their own struggling against zip ties with a wadded ball of gauze taped into her mouth.

"She bring plenty of hurt. No feel sorry for from Big Bang. You be useful? Go find Big Bang's missing swipey swipe. Tell me how many numbers left for getting things. Want big pick me up drink! Co...cof...coffee...Yes! Coffee! Find some and pour in Big Bang's mouth!"

"Who the hell do you people think you are arresting one of my officers?" The peacemaking officer pointedly ignored Big Bang's loud proclamations. "Where the hell are these others that you have illegally detained as well?" The new officer, who identified himself as Chief of Police Worthington, demanded to know. Asking Steve as he was set on the ground by Dan to allow his long form to collapse wearily into a snowdrift with a loud grumble. The officers that had escorted us here were dismissed out of hand after trying to provide their recollection of events and the injury of one of their own. Worthington was not interested in what he called "unrelated banditry".

A child of the egg flapped by overhead, taking that as his entrance cue, with one captive held in a hand. The wrecked truck, with its surviving asshole still inside and lucky to be alive, landed bouncing on its wheels with two of the tires exploding upon touchdown. Screams to be let out came from the twisted remains of Detroit's finest. The young male who had been carrying it swooped upwards to land on the hospital roof. I felt a moment of brief confusion, and then rage speared through my mind. Raising a hand, I rubbed the side of my head wearily.

What now?

Before I could expand my awareness out to the distance of the roof to see what was going on up there, sleepy presences awoke and flared into searing pain followed by agonized bellows that could only come from one kind of long throat. The first javelin of rage quickly collapsed on itself and I felt the humming lullaby of one child of the egg comforting others, easing whoever was in pain up there. I let it go for now to listen to the boy in blue in front of me.

"What the fuck is this?" The enrage police Chief screamed at Steve still ignoring everyone else. "Did you tell that creature to do that?"

It didn't take much effort on my part to see what Worthington's mindset was and where this was leading. The one thing I wasn't decided on was whether he was involved in the attack on us in the first place. Images I got from his mind were inconclusive. I could sense memory and emotion, not intent, and since he wasn't actively thinking about initiating an attack on us, I wasn't going to rip his mind open to find out.

Another apprehensive ripple ran down my spine making scales click and clack along with the uneasy fidgeting of my wings. I was okay with reading what he pictured and felt at the moment but not the past? How could I think any of this was alright? What was wrong with me when I felt that it was?

"You will answer for the actions of these animals as it is obvious that they can't answer for themselves! Officer Merrimack! Read him his rights!"

"Now see here Chief Worthington!" General Boyd thundered with his towering wings extending upwards to be lost in the blowing snow. "You are out of line for ordering the arrest of one under my command and authority! Under Executive Order of the President of the United States I have..."

"That Is no longer any authority I answer to, beast, nor are you entitled to claim it as authorizing you to do a goddamned thing! Shut your fucking mouth or I will have you in chains along with your spineless mind-controlled lackey!"

Boyd growled angrily deep in his throat. An action that he might have performed a thousand times as a human without anyone saying one word about it. But now that his throat was as long as it was, the sound was as menacing as the cocking of a firearm.

"The problem here Chief Worthington" the General stressed his title significantly into an ominously accentuated slur from his lowered head. The Chief sneered at the sight of the General's long tail sweeping forward to thump the ground heavily and then point its tip in his face. Akin to a human pointing an accusing finger. "Is that you are refusing to acknowledge the fact that forces under my command were attacked by armed civilians with stolen military weapons under the direction of one of your officers. Who then herself fired an anti-tank weapon on other, unarmed, civilians!"

Boyd stretched his tail towards Steve, standing impassively off to the side, and curled the very tip of himself around the spent tube of the recoilless rifle to lift it off his back. Worthington's gaze tracked the evidence as it was dropped before him with a clatter before lifting to glare back up at the large pale blue eyes watching his reaction. "You have a great many problems to explain Chief. I have sixteen members of the United States Air Force that will give testimony that they saw this woman lead an assault that left half of them in need of hospitalization! Now if the only thing you are capable of doing is to stand there and argue with me in between your other contemptuous remarks then you are dismissed, I have wounded to attend to.

"Master Sergeant Horowitz, Chief Worthington here has declined to accept the role that the man being cut out of the armored truck and Sergeant..." He stopped and tilted his head to lay one eye on the policewoman's name plate. "...Sergeant Powell had in an unprovoked attack utilizing preciously scarce emergency response vehicles as VBIEDs. Considering the evidence that I have right in front of me, I am using the authority granted me by executive action to place these two in confinement at a military facility once they are medically cleared. The two that you have in custody may remain yours however as they are not the ones that have been utilizing stolen military equipment."

"God damned lies you creature! You are talking about the end of domestic civilian control! I don't have to stand here and listen to this! Johnson, Smith, Rogers, Wilson! Get your fellow officer out of the hands of these...people."

"No." Boyd replied and curled his massive tail around to block Worthington and his officers away from the rest. When someone weighs better than eight metric tonnes, is covered in armor plates, holds the rank of Major General, and is operating under special instruction right from the top of the federal government, 'No' is the final word.

Violent emotions and imagery began to play in the minds of the small ones facing off against General Boyd and I could tell they were moments away from starting a god damned crisis. Leaving my wife under the awning covering the emergency room entrance and my brother on a stretcher I did what I had to do to keep the hospital from turning into a new conflict zone.

Exuding calm, I tamped down the wild emotions that were getting the better of everyone here. I didn't know what the Chief's specific beef with us was, but I was going to find out. Among the wounded that were going to be treated here, despite what the hospital admin thought on the matter, was my pregnant wife. I wanted calm. I wanted peace. And that was going to start right now.

The purple coloring of the police commander's cold stung face began to abate as I felt him accepting my calming influence even if I could also sense his confusion at why he was relaxing in the presence of beings he hated so much. Digging into other's minds was still just beyond the limit I was willing to go even though I had to fight against a growing part of me that reasoned sensibly that it would be perfectly okay to prevent aggression. In this case though, I had no idea what drove his animosity as he wasn't actively thinking of it.

Boyd, the lifelong bachelor, was pricklier to soothe than a pissed off porcupine as the soldiers assigned to his command were viewed by him more as his children than not. Despite his relatively sedate demeanor he was ready for more violence than in a John Woo movie after one of his 'kids' had been killed and several injured in the attack.

I was sympathetic to Boyd's plight. The images of how closely Kim and Alex had come to harm, not to mention my sleepy children slumbering in their mother's belly, made me want to taste blood. Terrifying levels of anger that I was better able to control than the General heated my already hot agitation, whether that be by personality or the rare sub-type that Kim and I were in our new species I didn't know. As if a tow truck had been chained to my head, my attention was drawn back to my wife and my brother, eliciting a long whine from my throat of longing to be touching them once more. To keep them safe. As a compromise, my tail snaked backwards until the end of it could run around my mate's wrist. At least that way I was able to keep tabs on her vitals and maintain a more intimate contact with our snoozing children. A distant miniscule pressure on my spine let me know that Alex was resting his hand on it as well. An arrangement that made me happy, even if I did have to bow a portion of my tail up into an arch to allow the small ones constantly hammering on the scales to pass by.

Reluctantly, I threw my attention back into what I was doing, just in time to tamp down unchecked aggression once again. They needed to listen. Especially Worthington.

"Chief, I understand your ambivalence and the source of your mistrust towards us better than you might think..."

"The hell you say!" He cut me off getting ready to yell once more. I raised a paw and lowered it in time with another calming pulse from myself to make him subside.

"Yes...I do say. Whether you think of us as animals or not, you are still here to protect the public from vigilantism and lawlessness are you not?"

With his lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, he nodded reluctantly. I could feel his mind jumping all over the place, but I needed him here, to focus. I nudged his mind to keep him on task, to keep his anger from filtering the issue. A mistake that I soon learned my lesson from, if I had allowed his mind to continue to jump, I would have known a great deal more without having to violate his privacy.

"Yet here we are telling you, dozens of witnesses, that we have two in our custody involved in a violent attack that left a number of the attackers dead and several businesses in ruins. How can you wash your hands of this so easily? Do the recollections of credible witnesses, the evidence of a man trapped in an armored truck with a turret for a heavy machine gun in the bed, and the spent tube of a military anti-tank weapon with the fingerprints of one of your own on it matter so little to you?"

"Your evidence collection is garbage. How do I know that isn't his!" He pointed at the Master Sergeant who had the tube slung on his shoulder. Whom, in turn, held up a gloved hand to point at his eyes and then wave to everyone around him in a meaningful gesture not lost on the Police Chief. Worthington sputtered in impotent rage at being boxed in on his response. "All the more reason for me to have her questioned by civilian law enforcement." He ground out through clenched teeth.

"Chief..."

I lifted my scales open to indicate my willingness to give him a fair shake, before an image popped into my head accompanied by a sense of proximity and urgency. The Chief was looking at six heavy equipment tactical tractors hauling five Bradley fighting vehicles and one Abrams main battle tank. He had seen them even if I could tell that he did not know where. That was why he was acting this way. His Sergeant was the leader of a local cell. He knew...

He was startled into gaping up at my head when I drew in a long hissing breath through my opened jaws. I could see the rims of my nostrils flare into view as they opened wide at the end of my long snout angrily.

"You knew there was going to be an attack...you know what was stolen. But you don't know where they are...You are involved...in...the group that attacked...that...risked... MY LOVE,MY CHILDREN, AND MY FUCKING BROTHER!"

"I don't know anything about stolen tanks and, even if I did, you can't prove a thing you wild fucking animal! I don't have to listen to outlandish accusations from some...thing that chirps and whistles at me like a rabid bird" He shouted and spun on his heel to leave. Grabbing his minion by her cuffed wrists, he dragged her along with him all the while shooting dirty glances at every watching head towering above him.

This was just as one more squad car arrived, escorting a fire engine, to cut apart the mangled truck. As soon as they had arrived, I whipped past the departing police chief and his shocked officers (What is going on? What does he know?) to block his exit. Looming over his vehicle, I put one hand down in between him and it while snaking my head down low with fins raised and trembling in agitation. Billowing clouds of heated air from my throat melted the snow caught in it to rain down on him in a fine mist as he walked right into the tip of my lower jaw. So sudden and darting were my movements that he had not even had time to react to the leaping spin of my passage. My head cocked to keep one eye on him in case he had the suicidal thought to fire with his squirt gun right into the soft lining of my palette.

"You stupid fucking asshole..." I growled at him from the side of my snout. He had slipped up in his confusion when confronted by thoughts I had plucked right from his own head. "...no one said anything about tanks. You are not going anywhere." I finished, with finality. Blaring alarm erupted across his thought processes as I sensed his emotions tangle into a knot of dread. Like watching a radiant pattern of strings converging to a single point into an inseparable chaos that left him gaping like the handful of fish I had scooped out of the lake a few months ago.

"Find out where those tanks are Tom Schwarzkopf, at all costs." The General instructed me. I knew this was coming and I was ready for it.

"No. If they are not thinking of the locations then they are not announcing their thoughts for me to read. I will not rip them apart to find out that information. Others will be right to be afraid of us if I do. This is not the way. Plus, think on this General. What good would that information be in a court of law? In punishing these people and others for their crimes? Is this what you want? To set ourselves apart like that? You can kiss any and all kind of unity from ever happening goodbye. I promise you that."

He stared at me for several long minutes with nostrils flaring and pupils constricted into unblinking saurian slits. A lifetime of thought, thinking at the speeds that we were capable of. Snorting through his nose, he lowered his snout to the ground to indicate that he had nothing better.

"As you say. You know the toll of taking the high road may be steep for all of us."

Curling his head around to his own back, and the low visibility capsule there that was hard to see through the blizzard we now seemed to be in, the General gave his crew orders. "Contact the mayor's and the governor's office. Inform them of the situation. We need a new command for the city's forces. The Chief here has abdicated his responsibilities, effective immediately."

"You can't! You have no fucking..."

An irate pair of eyes the color of polished copper opened to gleam at Worthington from a gargantuan head already covered by a coating of snow. In the gloom of the stormy day Big Bang's head had been indistinguishable from her surroundings to the humans the minute it had been covered by the fresh powder. Evidence more of how quickly the snow was falling than how long the argument had been. We were in for a real winter storm.

"Everyone shuts their stupid looking faces while Big Bang takes nap! Keep making noise and I make your tail hurt like mine! Big Bang promises!"

I didn't have the heart to tell her that the only reason that she could sleep was that I was dampening her pain by absorbing it myself. My gods damned tail felt like it had been cut to ribbons by shrapnel. Which hers had and was still seeping blood along with her twitching hind legs. What the fuck were the medics doing? Couldn't they see she was bleeding through her field dressings?

"You four have a choice to make. Do you side with the rule of law, or blind obedience?" General Boyd had curled his head around to ask the policemen caught between a rock and a hard place.

I let go of my wife's wrist and swapped head for tail to return to my wife and brother, who I was annoyed to see still hadn't been tended to yet. As I did, I heard the cops temporize by asking to speak with the mayor as well. Sensible enough given that they were effectively being asked to ignore the commands being shouted at them by their usurped commander. I kept part of my attention on their emotions to stop any insipient violence if it was needed. The flashing eyes of a pissed off Big Bang, and the cranky bloodshot ones of her two shadows peeking from her sheltering wing, seemed to be sufficient at the time in dissuading any rash actions.

The situation with my wife, from what I had heard while I'd been listening at the same time I was with Boyd, was that a doctor wearing a coat thrown over his green scrubs was debating with an unknown woman. The brunette man had his arms wrapped tightly around his thin lanky body and was shivering as thick snow clumped in his hair.

_ _ I saw through his sight that he was looking with particular interest at the spaghetti bundles of nerves severed in the exposed wound of the amputated limb before the patch was closed again by the doctor talking to him. I felt his excitement at how large the nerves were even through the sluggish inertia that the cold, seeping into his frail frame, was imparting on his mental processes. His thoughts at how easy they'd be to manage made my hopes rise, making the impossible seem a little more likely. He was a neurologist.

For just a moment, my overbearing worry for my family and all the pain I was taking into myself was pushed aside to make room for a little bit of levity. When my heated breath bathed the shivering neurologist accompanied by the heavy snuffles of my breathing, he screamed and jumped straight upwards where his head fit easily into my nostril. Which was funny enough but got even better with the fact that he had jumped at the same time I had started to inhale. I didn't know how big my lungs were, but I did know that they created enough of a pressure drop to get his head stuck in my naris.

High strung laughter erupted after a short period of shocked silence once I snorted him out onto the ground (careful to lower my head so that he didn't fall on his ass). It lasted for a fleeting moment before I silenced it with a groan of pain as my head swam with the vicarious agony of everybody's TBI rattling their skulls.

"What can you do for her? What are the chances of reattaching her hand? Why aren't you prepping her for surgery? How is her blood pressure? What about my brother? Why isn't he in the ICU? His symptoms have gotten worse! Does Kim need more blood? I can give as much as she needs right now, just hook into where..."

Angelica the hospital administrator, who had been staring with a shocked look on her face at my wife's truncated limb, interrupted my anxious rambling. An indication that I was being undone by the incredible fatigue that was making my focus loosen and mind wander like a kit in a tornado. Cutting me off as I pointed repeatedly for emphasis with one wing at the other where the remains of the IV line that had been ripped apart earlier in the chaos of the first explosion.

She gave an apprehensive glance at my writhing tail stretched far, far, behind my head. I knew she was worried more about it accidentally hitting something or someone than anything else. Like the insane fact, which made her bite her lip in a worryingly hysterical manner to keep herself from maniacal laughter that she wouldn't be able to stop, that she was going to try to reason with a worried dragon that had a head larger than her entire body.

"Look, your name is Tom, right? This..." She waved her hand to encompass us all, small, and big ones alike. "...is the very definition of a mass casualty event. My third one today I'll have you know. The first one was a riot with armed protestors demanding that Idaho kill or drive away all of you and any immigrant they can find. Legal or otherwise. I've got two dozen from that nonsense including eight that have to be chained to their beds housed separately from everyone else. Next an apartment complex fire that has my waiting room full of people on ventilators from smoke inhalation after looting in a shopping center set fire to the residential area next door. All that, mind you, is just from today. I have the mayor on the local television channel begging anyone that has ever had medical training in their life to come volunteer.

"I'm sorry for the loss of your wife's limb. But whoever did this surgery in the field has stopped the bleeding for now. She is stable, and the limb being packed in snow is the best we can do to preserve it for now. People...are...dying. Even those like you. Which by the way, I want you to tell those others I saw fly up to the roof to get off it if they're healthy. We're treating four child dragons for gunshot and fire burns right now up there under the cover of...of god damned portable picnic shelters! Jesus! What the fuck is wrong with everyone? A little boy up there asked...he asked... Oh my god...Oh my god...Help us...Help us..."

She trailed off with a sob and tears that froze to her cheeks in the frigid air. Led away by the neurologist who looked back and held up a finger to tell me to wait. I knew what Angelica was going to say, I could hear it in the voice of the little male who called himself Ben. I could see the bandages covering one of his eyes, most of his neck, and one wing that was obviously missing its membrane. The blood-soaked bandages from where flaming wreckage had hit him.

He had asked if his dad was okay after the house fell on him.

Latching onto her distraught thoughts, I learned all that I could about what happened here today at her hospital. They were serving as overflow from the overwhelmed level II trauma center across town. Which, I suppose, is where I should have taken my wife instead of just the largest hospital in the area. But I wasn't going to take her there now if they were so overwhelmed that this treatment facility was taking those that the other could not.

I moaned wordlessly at the thoughts and feelings of so much pain and suffering. Taking comfort in the nearness of my wife, insensible brother, and the fluttering heartbeats of my children making it through shell, muscle, skin, and scale in turn. That was the sorry state I was in, stroking my wife's spinal fin with my wing, when the neurosurgeon and the other doctor showing him my wife's injury returned to speak with me.

"You have a window of about six to eight hours for an attempt at replantation of your wife's limb. I'm going to be honest with you, I have never seen nerves like yours before in my life. Can you believe when I touched the severed nerve with a gloved hand the shock knocked me down and burned a hole in the surgical glove? What does that? A sciatic nerve in a human being is at most two centimeters in diameter. Each of your axons are larger than that. The nerve trunk sprouts so many fibrous branches, reaching into what I'm guessing are scent glands and smooth muscle tissue underlying the scales, that..."

"Can you fix my damn wife's arm?" I cut him off, poking him physically with a wing claw and mentally to show him how badly I needed to hear that everything would be okay. With contact the link open and I couldn't help that the the depths of my fatigue found its way across with my need for an answer. Unexpectedly he yawned and his eyes closed sleepily. Getting my sleep addled state under control, I swapped lethargy with an energy boost that scraped from the bottom of a barrel somewhere in my body. He perked up just as suddenly, rubbing his eyes while the woman next to him held him steady by the shoulder.

"Ugh...what...why was I so tired all of a sudden? Why..."

"I'll explain in a moment. As soon as you answer my question. I know I'm being selfish right now because I think what I tell you will help with the others and their head trauma. But my wife...my wife..." Hot steaming tears rolled from my eyes. I felt each one run around the edges of the scales on my cheeks before reaching my jaw and falling to melt the snow. "...I need my...I mean, she needs her arm back. She's pregnant, we need everything we can to help ourselves. We're not safe."

They looked at me with sympathy, that I could feel just as easily alongside their shock. But just because I was being selfish doesn't mean I had to be foolish. The sooner they knew what happened to my brother and the others, the quicker they could help them. A quick huddle between them to discuss what was needed for such a huge operation was interrupted by an anguished scream from across the parking lot. I grunted loudly and stumbled on my front legs before sinking to the ground when General Boyd's grief drove an icy spear into my head.

The deceased Staff Sergeant Morales was being unloaded from the slumbering Big Bang's shelter under the supervision of Steve and had caught the General's attention. I knew that Boyd knew of the casualty but seeing the shattered remains of one of his 'children' was a shock to his new system that he wasn't ready for. Children of the egg hung their heads limply and moaned despondently in sympathy with the General's bellowing shrieks. But we had already given our lamentations, and it was not our turn to have the world hear of our grief for the fallen.

I wondered who would cry for those that had turned to violence and caused the death of Morales. Fear, anger, and smug righteousness were all that I could pick up from the living attackers that had been in on the earlier strike. Sympathy, and grief for their own fallen were not. Just a sneering contemptuous attitude directed at General Boyd. Looking over, and past the two doctor's heads while they clamped their hands to their ears, I spied two of the loathsome malcontents and their possible enabler.

There were a few things I could think of that would wipe those smug fucking thoughts clean from their minds. Then...I would be the monster they thought I was. Would it stop this madness though? Is there a line I shouldn't cross? I could force the emotions and pain that continued to batter me into them if I touched them. I knew I could. Would it change their minds? Harden them? Grumbles of discontent and indecision vibrated in my chest. If I miscalculate, the consequences could be severe. I could make a whole new group of people afraid of us. Ready to attack us. Others might not listen to my explanation. Would I have to use my strange abilities on them as well just to get them to understand? A self-perpetuating cycle is what I might end up with.

I considered the opposing side of our grievances with them (They will pay!) and calmed General Boyd with soft nudges of relaxing tranquility and patience. I understood the General's anger. The feeling of Kim beneath my arm, and Alex discordantly patting at my scales reminded me of why. A constant drum beat that was loud in my fins. What punishment would be better than to feel the anguish that they had caused? To feel the pain that others like them had inflicted on those in and on the hospital. Dozens, hundreds, of those inside squirmed in pain from the actions of others like them. It was wrong to give them the pain that others may have caused, but there was plenty of suffering outside with me to go around.

My mind settled. A deterrence, a punishment, a warning. Understanding. What this world seemed to lack. Understanding, empathy, consequence.

My eye twitch and refocused on (Doctor Herath) and her companion (Doctor Archbold) just as Boyd's sorrowful keen ended with a rasp and he chuffed nearly silent sobs.

"What is wrong with him? Is he going to eat us?"

Again with the fucking eating of people!

"He has lost one of his chi...soldiers. Show some fucking respect! My wife. Can you help her?"

"...It will take a team of four to _attempt_to reattach her limb. With one of...you...to move it for us into position. We need more people, and there is the matter of cost..."

I took a deep breath, my body swelling and wings lifting. Clenching my stomach and driving my wings downward I screamed in the woman's face. Like a bolt of lightning had hit at her feet, she jumped backwards and knocked her fellow practitioner to the ground. There they huddled with hands clamped to their ears in the face of the physical force of my outrage.

"I think...I think...billing can discuss costs with you. The real problem is we just don't know anything about you! Is there someone...an expert on your physiology? It's been almost a year now, there must be..."

"First, get up and stop cowering. I'm not going to hurt you. Second, how fucking dare you quibble about costs for my fucking pregnant wife's wellbeing? Third, how fucking dare you?"

"We need money too! I don't know if you noticed lately, but the economy has tanked and jobs are scarce. I had to sell off my summer hom..." She trailed when she realized what a callous bitch she was starting to sound like. Good for her, I'd hate to have twitch my tail or wings to remind her somehow that I only had four fucking limbs and was a god damned human being before zero day. "Plus, there's the fact that she is...you are...we've only been trained in..." I cut off her stammering and began to work on her and his vanity. I didn't have to needle them long.

"You are apprehensive about working on my wife's limb. Good. I would question your sanity if you weren't. But consider this...Neurosurgeons are what? A dime a dozen?"

Their reaction was even more riotous when it was coupled with the fact that they couldn't tell that my face was creased with amusement at their high dudgeon.

"But how many children of the egg neurosurgeons are there? How many trade journals will you get to have your names plastered into for being the first to successfully replant an amputation? Just think...what kind of investments you could bring to this hospital. Why, you could be leading the way for the whole rest of the country!"

I felt I was laying it on a little thick. But the fish were biting that day it seemed. I could _smell_their avarice and pride cooking overtime.

"We still need capital, and competent hands. Angelica is never going to allow..."

Fish on! Too fucking easy...

"You'll get your money, and I'll find your manpower. Whatever it fucking takes! Now..." I shifted on to my side and opened my scales to let the wintery blanket I lay on ease my maltreated nerves and twisted my hips to stretch my legs out. I ignored their embarrassedly averted eyes from my groin. It's not like I was aroused or any fucking thing. "...Explain to me why my brother and the others with significant brain injuries aren't inside."

"Your younger brother is being monitored, if you haven't noticed." I had, actually, been keenly aware of everything that was involving him. Including the only thing keeping me from tearing the apart the hospital was that I didn't sense his condition getting any worse and someone had swaddled him in blankets. I wondered what good the ancient woman that was talking to him would be, however. They really had called in retirees. The neurologist laid his hand on the doctor's shoulder and took over for her.

"What happened to them, in detail if you please."

I told them about the explosions, their number, the distance everyone that I had eyes on were from each blast, everyone's symptoms, and so on. Then I began to fidget wondering how to describe what originally happened.

"Is that all? I don't know anything about your body language, but if I had to guess by your shuffling and the way that you keep looking away from us, I'd say there's something else you want to say..."

"I...lost control when I thought my wife had died. I don't know what that did to them, but their symptoms resemble brain injuries as well."

He looked at the woman next to him, who shrugged, and turned back to look at me, perplexed. "You mean...you attacked them? I mean... given your size and what I guess is your strength you wouldn't have to hit one of us very hard. We haven't seen any kind of blunt force trauma of that magnitude..."

"Don't do that." I grumbled, scales rustling in agitation to release the scent of my emotions to be whisked away at once by the storm. I sensed the intent behind his words, he was thinking us vs. them. "Don't divide us into separate groups, we're in this together."

"Okay...okay..." He held up his hands placatingly, looking below my line of sight to where my mouth was slightly parted to allow the tips of my teeth exposure to the cold air. I sighed unhappily. His jumbled thoughts were shot through with fear and apprehension.

"I can...my wife and I have...empathic abilities to feel and interpret other's emotions and thoughts. We can do a lot more than that with children of the egg, but we don't really know.I don't really know what all we're capable of. When I thought my wife died, when she was cut off from me, it was like cutting a steel cable under load. I lashed out of control and hurt everyone around me. That is all I am able to tell you about what happened."

"You're...you're reading our minds? Like right now? What am I thinking?"

I snarled and hammered the ground with a curled foot. "Now is not the time for cliched parlor tricks! If you don't have anyone to help right now, Doctor Archbold" I growled at the man with the elemental timbre of a rockslide. The man, who had never given me his name, gasped.

"Then start getting together a fucking list of what you need to operate on my wife! Get out a pen and paper, here is your contact to learn everything that you need to about us. Colorado State University, Department of Exobiology. Bryan Cyan and Serena Willow, 970-555-5555 ext 555. Got it? If you need scans of our biology, ask me, and I will talk one of the younger children of the egg into allowing themselves to be imaged."

I dismissed them with a curt jerk of my head towards the entrance hidden behind my wife's body. Just as Angelica reemerged, steam coming from her collar and her mind.

"Who is making decisions involving experimental surgeries in my hospital without me present? Please tell me why you think I'm going to allow this!"

Considering I was the one discussing the matter with them (rumbling speech travels pretty far), it was no surprise on my part that she had heard my end of the conversation. The seed had been planted in their heads though. I knew as long as they felt that it wouldn't leave the hospital short staffed or resourced, they would move on reattaching my wife's arm. Which was half of what I wanted. The female doctor pulled Angelica back inside to discuss the surgery, and my head lifted clear above everyone and swung back to my brother as Archbold finally saw to him.

"How is he?" I asked "and what the fuck is my brother still doing out here in the cold? Alex are you cold? I can wrap my tail around you some more."

He had his eyes covered with one hand to block the light and mumbled his reply without looking at me. "What is Kim's heart blood pressure?"

"Brother...don't worry about Kim. Please, just rest. I don't...I don't know the effects of what I've done to you. Please. Promise me you'll relax."

The old woman (Bachman) opened her mouth to ask me what I had done, but Archbold waved her off.

"It's not a matter of bed space, it's a matter of number of medical personnel. Many have lost their jobs due to the budget. Others have fled to be with their family in the hopes that they can ride out the violence in the city. I had to learn what I could of what happened to them, as did Dr. Herath. There was no one to take them inside. Now, your brother is going straight into the MRI, as soon as the others who have gotten worse are done. Let's go."

I was going to ask why the old woman couldn't have taken Alex inside, at least until I saw her get up creakily from her seat. She had been sitting on a walker hidden behind the gurney my brother lay on.

"You need to rest too, little brother." Alex mustered what was left of his exhausted medical authority to demand. "The others might not be able to tell, but I can see how tired you are. It has something to do with how numb I feel doesn't it? The pain and disorientation stopped almost as soon as it started. It's what you and Kim can do isn't it?"

"I am fine Alex, get some rest and come back to me. I love you, and I'm sorry." I couldn't help the whimpering concern that underlay my reassurance and brought my nose close to him before he disappeared inside. To get his scent and convince myself that I would be with him again soon. "You better put him somewhere I can see him!" I demanded, blowing snow into violent eddies with a snort. "I'll come find him if you don't!"

"Um..." I heard a tiny voice and cocked my head to look down at a boy who seemed way too young to be working in a hospital. He glanced nervously up at me and along my length before his eyes bashfully darted back up to my head. I gave a heaving sigh, rolled my eyes, and then twisted my hips until both of my legs were back on the ground.

"Yes?"

"...um Mr. Dragon, sir. Could you ask one of the others to help you move the patient here away from the entrance to the ER? We've shoveled a nice area for the patient to lay out in the staff parking lot just over..."

"My name...is not Mr. Dragon. It's Tom, or Mr. Schwarzkopf if you want to be formal about it. The 'patient' you refer to is my wife, Kim or Mrs. McConnor-Schwarzkopf. She is expecting and injured. What shelter is going to be provided to her and the others I see trudging out there right now?" I pointed at Dan stumbling out to the cleared square and the kid unnecessarily ducked as the wing meters above his head extended. A dull pulsating queasiness and concern for Sarah and Becky drifted to the front of the multiple beings I was in contact with before I pushed the ribbon of thought back.

"Well, uh...Mr. Tom...I've been told that...uh...by Ms. Ratched that the...uh...." He trailed off mumbling in a way that someone who didn't have ears the size of radar dishes wouldn't have caught. "...dogs stay out in the yard where they belong." He perked up again though and continued a little louder. "But I've been assured that there are tents coming to make you at least somewhat comfortable!"

"By who?" I already knew, seeing an image of General Boyd flashing to the front of the kid's mind, even if he didn't know himself who was addressing him.

"...the...the dragon wearing the thing?"

"By me." Boyd said, padding over from telling Angelica to reach a consensus with her competitors in the area what supplies, and manpower, were needed.

"A security team is inbound accompanying a National Guard supply unit. Eight lightweight maintenance enclosures, along with heating and power generation equipment is coming our way. ETA, ninety minutes."

"Can you trust them?" I asked, as the kid (Murphy) scrambled away without a look back. "Help me get my wife up so that I can move her."

Constrained by the roof of the delivery area, it took several minutes of bow-legged shuffling to get Kim lifted between us with our tails and wings. Her head rested on mine as we brought her out, mindful of her wound, to the cleared area that was already full of drowsy children of the egg. My scales flared open to release the lavender soporific to ease some of the tranquilizing effects off of my mind. Boyd blinked sleepily at me, dull confusion at the sudden fatigue in his head, and I cleared his thoughts of the effects as some of the others began to drift off into restful sleep. Once Kim was settled, and I had a wing stretched over her head and injured limb, I called for someone to recheck her dressing.

"I can trust my own men. The National Guard unit, I won't vouch for. That's why they will be here as support. I, will provide security."

"How is it that you can call up these Nasty Guard guys? How are they mobilizing so quickly?"

"The how on my end are my orders. The how on theirs, is that many national guard units throughout the country have been activated semi-permanently to safeguard their weapons and equipment after tanks and heavy weapons started going missing. Not to say that problem has stopped, but it's much harder for rogue individuals or teams to make off with the more lethal stuff. Many guardsmen have lost their jobs as well and are being used by state and federal agencies for a myriad of support operations. Need I say more?"

He didn't. Plus, there was the fact that I had no desire to discuss anything more than I needed to at the moment. All of the talking and raising my voice to call out to others was starting to catch up to me. My long neck spasmed, and with several convulsions I coughed up a semi-clotted glob of blood. As I stared at the congealed blob morosely, an apologetic air surrounded Boyd. Contrition for the blood and for what he was about to ask of me, as well as for his earlier anger.

I waved his apology away with a flap of a wing and twitch of my tail before he even got started.

"Your anger was justified even if it made the situation worse, and you need to know what happened. Let's get this over with before I can't talk anymore."

Bowing my wing arm to allow a man pushing a recalcitrant cart loaded with medical supplies to pass into its shelter to give another go at cleaning Kim's wound, I settled in to relate what happened. Once Boyd had called over Steve, his security point man that now had a bandage wrapped around his lower leg, we began the full debriefing.

Throughout the brief, Boyd again and again payed special attention to descriptions and indicators of what I had done during the battle. What I was doing even as I spoke to him. Absorbing and then negating pain, coordinating responses, affecting emotions. It was not hard to see the value of someone like me, like Kim, in a scene of chaos. In a battle. Or anywhere, for that matter.

Able to feel what others are thinking and then put the information together to form chains of thought, purpose, and information, it felt wrong to use the ability and a gross invasion of privacy. But at the same time...I used it without a thought to what I was doing, or the concern for the rights of others to keep their thoughts to themselves. I couldn't bring myself to dive into other's memories, but had no problems swaying their emotions. Was this what Kim, I, and others like us meant to do? To temper the worst the violence in other's by playing with their emotions? To link the victims with their transgressors?

I...I wasn't if what I was doing was right or wrong anymore. Swaying other's emotions to affect their judgement and actions? I think...I think that's wrong although I wasn't as sure as I was before. But what if I could lessen the most harmful actions of others by showing the pain they caused? Diving into someone's mind without permission was off-limits, I told myself. But, why couldn't their active thoughts be fair game? They were broadcasting! I was just a radio receiver more than anything, catching their electrical impulses and constructing pictures and feelings from the noise.

My considerable attention splitting abilities must have hit their limit, causing me to drift. Because suddenly all I could smell was Boyd and his head filled the vision of my right eye with his wing knuckles giving me a gentle nudge.

"Are you all right, Master Sergeant Schwarzkopf?"

He looked me over concernedly, nostrils flaring, to see if there were any injuries that hadn't been noticed. There were a few minor chipped scales and shallow gashes on my right hindquarters and tail. But nothing major. My distraction did not originate from the physical.

"I'm tired and this is all new to me, what I am doing. My tolerance has not been developed. My love...my love...I thought she was taken from me today..."

He was redolent with sympathy as he hesitantly reached out with his tail to rub mine in a way that I took comfort in. Before realizing what he was doing anyway. His tail snapped back with a crack that shook the air and temporarily silenced the chatter around us. His confusion was heavy in his mind and I nudged it silent while giving him a reassuring smile.

"It's weird having a tail isn't it? Hard to get used to what we are now."

He grunted and shifted his attention to his security officer before looking back to the lights of the hospital through the snow in the direction his body extended.

"That it is." Plumes of heated breath wreathed his snout as he snorted dismissively, tiny voices coming almost silently from the earpiece clamped to the base of his ear fin while he listened. His tail returned to mine and rubbed it once more before he surged to his feet and shook the snow off himself. Ignoring the startled yelps from the weathertight shelter on his back at the sudden movement he glanced at Steve and told him to go get out of the cold before moving off with a parting word.

"I can't tell you to rest, but you need to at some point. Do not leave yourself so exhausted that you cannot act quickly if things go sideways. I have men coming to establish a new security cordon, for now you must remain vigilant. If that means...letting some others take the bite of their injuries for now, then that is what you must do. Only you know what you can handle.

"And Tom?"

"Stay the fuck out of my head."

"Stay the fuck out of my head."

He made no comment, other than what his tail expressed by lashing savagely, and left to wedge the very head under discussion inside the double doors to the ER. A brief lull in the snowfall allowed me to see Angelica talking animatedly to the two doctors I had spun up earlier before the three jumped at the sudden monstrous intrusion of Boyd's head.

I suppose he knew I would respect the unspoken plea to honor his wish to keep things such as national security secrets and his own thoughts safely hidden in the future...If I could help it. Which I wasn't entirely certain I could without spending an inordinate amount of attention on doing so.

I peeked beneath the shelter of living canvas covering most of Kim's forward body. The man from earlier was still there at her severed limb, trying to pretend he hadn't been listening the whole time. I ignored him, until he noticed my head and asked me to open my mouth so he could see what was causing me to bleed.

"It's my neck where I was shot by a 50cal sniper rifle. Unless you're willing to wear a respirator and go headfirst down my throat with a rope tied around your waist, there's nothing you can do for me, Nurse Nguyen.

"Actually, I take that back. There are two things you can do for me. One, find out if a decision has been made about operating on my wife. Two, go find my brother, get his cell, and have someone not doing anything for the moment bring it back to me so that I can make a call."

This conversation was going to be all the fun of throwing myself into a giant dryer full of razor blades. Our children deserved to know what happened to their Mother and their Uncle.

"Please give me some privacy." I asked him after he had returned several talon clacking, tail lashing, minutes later of me calming one child of the egg after the other as they awoke in pain on the roof. With a scraping noise I drug my hand forward, palm turned up, and he reached between two curving claws that extended above his head to rest the phone on it. Pushing send, he collected his things and pat me on the elbow before departing.

"Hey Uncle...Dad! Hey, it's Dad!" Lucy answered the phone, and I couldn't help my spirits soaring at seeing her angelic face, freckled and smiling, on the screen. A pleased trill burbled up from my throat and I opened my scales to signal my pride with fins flared. Whatever anyone else says about us now, my children can still tell who we are by sight. As far as I was concerned, that went a long way towards helping me make peace with what I was.

"Hey, one of my two favorite strawberries." I exulted, wishing that Kim was awake to join me in telling our children that everything was okay.

"Daddy!" She exclaimed with a blush threatening to drown her freckles in a sea of red. I laughed as she giggled.

"Are you and mom okay? Where is she? It's snowing like crazy here! Are you two cold? You didn't take the scarfs Luke and I..." Her smile collapsed as the fins on the top and sides of my head drooped.

"Daddy...where's mommy?" she sniffled, with tears already bunched and waiting to fall gathered in her eyes. God damnit, why couldn't we be there for her? What was wrong with Kim and me? I was already screwing this up.

"It's okay strawberry, she's right here. She's right here. Mommy is just resting. See?" I tried to wrench my hand around, lifting my head and neck out of the way of the camera, but a drowsy head was snugged up into the crook of my elbow and I could only vaguely wave the cellphone in the direction Kim was.

"Irma said that you were out being brave and stupid. She...she...told us..."

"Hey, hey! Sweetie it's okay, your mom is going to be just fine. She's going to be okay. I promise."

Damn you Irma! What is wrong with you?

"You mean...you mean she's not okay now?" Tears began to roll down her little cheeks as the floodgates burst and squawks of dismay came from her end. The camera jostled as one oval pupiled eye after another shoved its way into the view frame. Squeaking chirps of infantile children of the egg rang out and overwhelmed the tiny microphone. Questions about what was going on, why was 'Flower Girl' sad, was there danger, should I bite, and multitudes of others came through the speaker from human and alien throats alike.

Damn you Tom! What is wrong with you?

"Strawberry. I'm sorry that I'm not helping you right now. I'll explain everything that happened, but can you please get your brother and your sister for me first? I want you three to be together while I tell you."

Promises, none reassuring, to hear what happened sent her over the edge and she ran off crying for her siblings while I waited. Sinking into misery and staring glumly at the phone as those on the other end investigated it. A human boy was trying to explain to a girl named Susan what the phone was and that it wasn't the reason why Lucy was upset. "No! No! It's not why..." the boy yelped and the last thing I saw, on what was my phone, was a tongue snaking out of a long snout before a glimpse of teeth as they bit down.

I sighed and drummed the talons of my other hand on the ground. Click. Click. Click. Click. Clack... My thumb claw came down with a more forceful and noticeably harsher tap. Fuck me.

The phone danced and jittered as Kim's phone called. It took me three tries, and the taste of god knows what from Alex's pocket, before careful pokes and prods from my tongue out of the side of my mouth accepted the video chat request. Luke and Lucy were bracketing an eye bigger than their heads on one side of Irma's where it was laying on the pillow covered floor of our shelter and leaned crying against the paw curled around them. Tears the size of golf balls fell from the giant red eye over their shoulders to land with soft plops on the pillows beneath it.

"DAD!"

"MOMMY!"

"MOOOOOMMY!"

I recoiled with a surprised hiss from the explosion of noise from the tiny device. My head reeling backwards to the extension of my long neck until the phone vanished four meters beneath my chin. Dousing the sound of a rattlesnake coming from my inflated throat, I recovered and lowered my head until my eye filled the little picture in picture window once more.

"She's fine! She's fine! She'll be okay! We're at a hospital in Boise, St. Luke's, and...and..." I sighed. "...and let me start from the beginning..."

I was a fucking mess by the time I was done. Irma's echoing howls of grief coming brokenly from the phone burying the sobs of mine and Kim's twins as they clung to each other. I had only the unconscious form of my wife and our children to take comfort in. Until the grief of telling my children just how badly things had gone, even with the warning we'd been given, overcame me. That feeling...that feeling of complete emptiness that had felt like it was sucking my soul right out of my own body when I thought Kim had left me. Left us. Her family. I cradled my head in my hand and moaned, claws scratching across hardened plates that grew from my face where soft flesh should be.

How could Shadi live like that? What were me and Kim doing? Risking ourselves and our children for strangers. Why did we feel as if it was us alone that could solve what had sent us on this journey? Why? Why? Why?

Kim and I had thought we were ready. We had thought we could alter the future and help others at the same time. We had been confident that we could weather any challenge together and keep each other safe. What a sick joke.

Thumper, you piece of shit. Where the fuck is Tomoko? Why has this happened? Tell me why my wife lays before me missing a limb Thumper! Answer me.

Nothing. Nothing from my powerful mental screams. As I expected. A lesson. This was all a fucking lesson. Everything was a fucking lesson. A manipulation. A trick. A ruse designed to change who we were and mold us into something we weren't before.

Was that right though? Was this meant nothing more than to push us down some path we knew nothing of? Had they known it would turn out this way? Was my paranoia justified?

Life was full of accidents like this before. Just as it now was. Did the aliens want us to be thralls to the fact that they existed? Incapable of our own identity? No. We had to accept that not everything had their hand behind it. Life was chaos. Things would happen, good and bad. We had to continue. We had to live. We had to be better. By pushing our problems off, by making them attributable to others, we had drawn the interest of powers beyond our understanding. Sinful characteristics of a species that ran rampant over the world they had claimed as theirs. We had payed, and would continue to, until we righted our wrongs. Until we were better than we were.

An oddly uneven nose, I recognized the feeling of Virginia and knew it was her scorched muzzle, rubbed along my neck at the same time another caressed the other side. Dan and Virginia reached my head, one of their eyes filling each of mine, before they nosed beneath and lifted me from the ground. Virginia cast her wing over Kim, me, and Dan as well, like the protective matron she was. Nodding her head to me and then tilting it to indicate the phone that my children's cries continued to emit from.

Soon, I felt warm scales blanketing me as I took reassurance from the minds of their owners. All the many injured from earlier, reacting to the feeling of my radiating distress, swarmed all around with Kim and I at the center. Snouts touched my body for comfort. Tails entwined others for solace. Uninjured lost ones from the roof returned with shouts of alarm chasing after them and several young ones on their backs. These children, many wrapped thickly in meters of gauze and sterilized bed sheets, were delivered to the center to rest achily alongside my mate's flanks. The safest place amongst us. I lulled them back to sleep with feeling of the blissful thrums of my children's heartbeats a scant distance away behind an armored wall of muscle, hide, and scale.

"Irma, Luke, Lucy." I continued gently, trying to lead them to some solace until I, we, were back to wrap them in our embrace where they belonged. "I want you three to find every friend, every love, everyone, and give them a hug. I want you to feel the warmth of each hug. Each friendly expression. And share with them how much you know your mother and I love you. I want you to picture the love that we feel, the comfort, that you know we would give you if we were there and share it with all of the others who might be as lost and filled with grief as you are. To help everyone who has come to our home to find safety. I want you to do all that while knowing that your mom, and your dad, will be there before you can forget what it felt to be held by those that raised you. And fill you with the thoughts and feelings of our love a thousand times over once again. I am so, so, sorry that I had to bring this news to you my strawberries, my beautiful mini-Kim." Irma snorted rough amusement through her tears at a little used nickname as I had hoped she would. "Can you show others how much love you have to give for your mom? Can you be strong for the guests in our home for your dad?"

Irma seemed to know that I was trying to do to help them in our absence and picked up on the thread. A swarm of children, eager four-legged ones and only slightly more cautious two-legged ones alike, tumbled into view at Irma's call. Many I did not recognize, making me wonder at the current status of the growing shelter. Tearfully, each of my children gave me their goodbyes and love, while I told them that I would bring their mother home to them as soon as she was able to travel.

Ending the call, a long sigh left my throat that trailed off into a choppy huffing noise. I...wouldn't let myself break down like that again. Not then. Curling my hand around the phone carefully in case it was needed, I sank into the mass of the others encircling me. Sleep, badly needed, was not to be found that night by me. I quieted the misgivings of the strange instincts around me for those who needed rest, finding several that resisted me and letting them go according to their will, as the majority succumbed to their fatigue.

General Boyd himself came to lay down beside the heap of children of the egg, shifting surreptitiously until he was pressed against a humming Virginia who grinned at him, half an hour later as my head guardedly tracked back and forth alongside Jill's. She had at last relinquished her husband to the care of the hospital staff by directing her son to accompany him. Joining us once she could no longer see her family from where her head and neck were able to fit inside. She had set herself up as a sentinel, over Kim in particular, to begin to make the amends that I could feel that she wished to make. I knew that before long she would want to speak to me about it. The twitching of her mind and tail told me at least that much.

The dismayed and apprehensive minds of several small ones approached the great cluster. Marveling at what was an unnatural gathering, I was still a little confused myself at the desire to huddle like this and I wasn't the only one, their unease and uncertainty at how we would react was sobering. Were we changing so much in behavior that those who retained their birth species didn't even recognize how we sought comfort in society now?

A nurse, features obscured from sight under thick bundles of clothes, trudged forward and asked us to let him through to see the children from the roof. He was worried that the burns many suffered might be exposed after their movement. There was a great shuffling around after I sent a picture and a request to the drowsing children of the egg blocking their path, and I felt a draft of air curl inwards to caress my scaled hips near where the patients lay.

It wasn't until I felt them go still and their minds dissolve into white noise that I knew how much being surrounded by supple warm scale and the lulling rhythms of so many at peace had affected them. Not knowing precisely how busy they really were, I told the three nurses checking bandages on the outermost injured that their coworkers had fallen asleep between us.

"Two specialists and a surgical team from the VA will be here to assist in your wife's surgery." Boyd said, startling me out of my sorrowful reverie. I looked at the sky and was surprised to see that night had fallen. Touching all the minds I was connected to, I made sure that each was as calm and stable as I could make them while I responded.

"When? And why? How are you arranging these things? Is this all for just my wife?"

Grinding laughter answered me as Boyd did something with his heads-up display and I heard a tinny voice from the speaker near his ear.

"Of course not. I am the leader of one of three dozen teams spread throughout the country managing local emergency resources. At the same time we are coordinators between state and federal services we also serve as multi-species bridges to navigate any...new challenges we may encounter. This is part of a system that I, with the help of the Huygens', have designed and been ordered to implement. After the declaration of martial law, we have been given broad authority to commandeer and federalize goods and services as seen fit to keep things under control throughout the country. The smaller the footprint, the less the challenge to the very foundations of our nation. We don't want open war or confrontation. Believe me when I say 'we' I am speaking with the full authority of the President of the United States of America. Not a one of the teams is led by anything less than O-8, and all of them include at least two...reborn citizens."

I laughed. "Reborn? That word was chosen carefully wasn't it." Reacting to my words, his thoughts flared with the answers I sought. Storm clouds blanketed his mind as he recalled scenes of shouting men of power, in suits and uniforms, with identifying placards in front of them demanding a purge of those they would not accept as members of society any longer. Damn the aliens, they said. If their threats are real, we will show them that we will die fighting. Other humans echoed by children of the egg, giant heads and eyes appearing on other screens like the one Boyd conferenced through, begged caution and reminded the others that fighting to prove that we should be eliminated was beyond foolish. Was it truly so hard to prove that an entire species could cooperate to prove our value? A governor from an interior state asked while a cabinet level secretary rumbled agreement as his head bobbed on his monitor. The president sat silent and deliberative, with hands clasped before him, as the memory faded from active thought.

I don't know if he knew that I was receiving his thoughts or not as he continued on.

"Even in the face of annihilation, humanity's stubbornness remains unabated. There are those that think that if all those reborn are neutralized that they will somehow get their way. My program is not just about resolving internal national conflict, it is a chance to prove to others that we can be a bridge to stabilize the human world after first contact with an overwhelmingly superior civilization. To come out of this better than we were before."

"There are many who think there was nothing wrong with the way things were before." I knew, and said. An agreeing grunt from his chest shook the snow from his right shoulder.

"No one likes to be told they must change. It is all the worse that this comes from outside our grasp of the natural world. The most violent of those we will face are the ones who are afraid of a world that they are no longer comfortably in charge of. Of a future that no longer matches the one that they were raised to believe they were entitled to."

"If you could, would you go back to the way things were?"

His eye swiveled to look at mine, before he turned his whole head all the way around to look at his body. Lifting and stretching one wing and the other. Ending his examination by raising his tail, I felt the weight of it and the shifting muscles that shouldn't be there through him, before letting it flop to the ground once again.

"No...I don't think I would. Even if it meant being stuck like this. Being...being a children's fairytale monster. If the world ends up being better, if humanity ends up better, I would consider it my duty as someone who wishes for tomorrow to be better than yesterday to offer myself to this fate to make it happen. I know the path will be hard and violent, but I honestly believe that we were on the wrong one entirely before...this."

He lifted his tail again and thumped it on the ground, sending snow flurries swirling into the air. I agreed whole heartedly, sharing with him how much I did through my connection. Flustered, he shifted his wings on his back and looked away.

Our ears perked up at the sound of engines approaching us, at the same time I felt the minds of five new children of the egg accompanying the vehicles' approach. The loudest of this new group fussily going over and over a checklist of some kind in her mind. An image of a piece of paper held up to her eye came and went that showed a list of items that seemed to be administrative in nature. I tamped down the unwanted urge to just find out what I wanted to know through the new way available to me.

Boyd excused himself and, on his way off to meet the approaching convoy, flared a wing to block my sight so that he could give a gentle and welcome encouraging nuzzle to Virginia. That I still saw when I felt her scales on my nose and his scent easing the residual discomfort that I felt.

Fuck...even when I try not to pry, I still am. Headlights appeared through dimly lit twilight while Boyd stood tall at the entrance to the parking lot to await the newcomers.

Twin shrieks came out of the gloom, and on the other side of me recognition flared and a head rose from the pile of suffering children of the egg. A call that only a parent would recognize. Dan's daughters had come looking for him after he failed to return.

The others, at my encouragement, would not let him gain his feet and leave the collective warmth. I knew how much he hurt and if he didn't, and if he struggled, I was more than willing to dump it all on him again to get him to subside. I gave a ragged groan of relief when he felt my frustration and frayed nerves and sagged back into his exhausted sprawl. Surprising himself when he curled his head around to give me an acknowledging bob of his head.

Shouting out to his daughters, their shadowy appearance came all at once when their heads burst between snow covered trees followed by their lithe forms as they raced towards him. Anguished thoughts grated against my mind when they cried out with strangled yelps at smelling their father in such dismal shape. Miserably, I rubbed my head against a nearby shoulder. Which it turned out belonged to Jill, as her thoughts jumped to prominence with our brief contact. Some of my leaking thoughts and concerns making their own jump to her mind, she rustled her scales with sympathy and I felt her snout touch my neck once before darting away again.

"I Jill re-spon-si-ble for your feelings. You rest, I mother, I know need."

She stopped, as a wave of fury washed over her mind briefly and she made a sharp spitting noise while snapping her jaw. I calmed her enough so that she could continue. Helping her do what she was trying to do would just make her angrier. She must ask, before I could offer.

"I know talk better before here now. I get noises in order maybe later. Maybe when Jill more on feet with who Jill is now. Jill know not su-pos-ed to be nak-ed! No peeky peeky at soft bottom scale!" I chuffed laughter with her at her attempt to liven the conversation. This is the kind of encouragement and help she would accept. I could feel it. She would get better about being more herself just by interacting with others.

Some of my attention briefly shifted as I heard who I now knew was the four-legged mayor of this city, quieting the outraged shouting of her police chief as his underling was finally handcuffed and led away like she should have been hours ago. Mayor Lauren McLean was settled down on her chest and belly in the snow, I felt how good it was on her aching muscles that hadn't stopped moving except to sleep for the past week, to have it out with her Chief of Police and General Boyd. Worthington was just a frothing ball of rage at being questioned by what he saw as nothing more than two dogs towering over his head.

Jill brushed my flank with her wing, and my eyes refocused on her worried ones.

"Shut eyes and rest like my child." The female just over half my age told me sternly. Which I ignored. Because I'm a grown up and I don't have to go to bed because others told me to!

"Later, when our security is in place. Please don't focus on me. Keep your attention directed out until we are secure." She looked disappointed for some reason, a quick scan was enough to tell me that she was trying to take care of me as part of her desire to make amends, but she followed my nudge to keep an eye out to the north. I sensed another reason was to distract herself from her child and comatose husband.

Which was something I could help her with. I found Arnold in a room with his father and my brother next to him. Alex was looking out the window from where he lay, but Jack stared blankly at the ceiling while a nurse fussed with his IV. A plaintive whine came from my...Arnold's throat and the nurse looked at him where he crouched warily in the corner to give him a sad sympathetic smile. Grabbing the string of Jill's thoughts, I led her to her child and connected them to each other with a mental push to keep the connection steady for as long as I was in range. Arnold brightened immediately and began bouncing around the room yelping that 'momma is here!' while the momma in question was quick to realize that I was responsible the sudden easing of her anxiety. Before I could stop her, her head had darted in towards mine to kiss me several times in thanks. Leaving her scent coating the scales of my jaw and the smell of my flustered embarrassment trailing away into the storm. A young male next to me (Ryan) chuffed snickering laughter at my discomfiture. Jill resettled on her vigilant watch, and I felt the spate of warm loving thoughts and assurances as she sent them across the bridge with her son.

Becky and Sarah ceased their yipping howls of dismay at the state of their drowsing father and the holes leaking blood from his wings where shrapnel had torn through him. Burrowing into the pile, they came up on his sides and unabashedly began licking his wounds to clot the bleeding. It was interesting to note that their human consciousnesses, or the scattered remains of them, felt this was a perfectly natural action. Making me wonder just how much becoming lost affected others in fundamental ways. With their thrumming and soporific lavender scent make his fatigue increase it took only the faintest of suggestions from me to lull him into a deep restful sleep.

With my head on Kim's back, the comfort of feeling the steady rise and fall of her breathing helping me deal with other's pain, I kept one out to the north west with the other looking inwards. Keeping an eye, part of my mind, and open ear fin on Boyd, McLean, Worthington, and the now thoroughly bundled Angelica discuss what was next.

It wasn't long before I heard, saw, and sensed, their attention turn towards me. The mayor, wearing a ridiculous assortment of camping tents and hodgepodge antennas on her back, reached out and scooped Worthington off the ground when he tried to ignore her and go his own way. A small crowd of little ones followed the giants as they stomped over to ask me what I already knew was a bad idea.

"No."

That brought the mayor up short, I felt her surprise at being pre-empted in asking me to find out what her police chief knew, and she set him down and gave him a gentle nudge forward.

Picking himself off the ground, Worthington yelled that he didn't know anything already.

"It's true. He saw the tanks, but he doesn't know where they are. Neither does his Sergeant. Whoever they were in contact with is compartmentalizing everything."

Mayor McLean sat down and pawed at her chest for a moment before turning her troubled snout and yellow eyes down at her Chief of Police and then to her back. "Jerry, come out here. I need to talk to you. The rest of the council, please go inside and get yourselves warmed up and call it a day. This will be our stopping point for the night my little fleas." She tittered at her joke as a small crowd of people (the city council) walked down her tail using her raised fin as a handrail in the snowstorm to the welcoming hospital entrance.

"Sometimes I think the people of this city voted not to recall me just because I am a four-footed city hall. What do you think?" Chuffing laughter erupted from her throat and I couldn't help but warm to the smaller female. A welcome distraction for me.

"I think it's because no one wanted to be eaten." Worthington muttered to himself. Which everyone with a set of ear fins heard of course.

"No one asked you Mr. Poopy. Now, I'm being told that you know some things about the danger to the city that you are presumably keeping as safe as you are able too. Elaine, council president Elaine, what do you think the city council would say to our dear chief of police acting in such a way?"

"It's a gross dereliction of duty." The elderly woman said, glaring silent thunder at Worthington. "I wonder, yes, I wonder very strongly at his motivations for doing so."

"What to do, what to do..." McLean said absently while staring at the diminutive head of her law enforcement. Behind her, her tail tip stood up and twitched back and forth like a metronome while she appeared to give him thought. A ruse, I knew from her thoughts, she had already made up her mind. She wanted to see if he'd crack.

He did. Throwing fearful glances at me. He had heard enough to know that I was responsible for an outburst beyond my ability to control that resulted in a stream of small ones parading through an MRI like it was a tunnel to Wonderland.

"Okay! Yes, I saw tanks..."

"From now, you no longer have any authority. Bob. Do you understand me?" McLean's glacial voice rolled over Worthington's. He sputtered at her declaration and interruption.

"You...you can't...my name isn't even..."

"I can't fire you in the middle of a crisis. And I don't care what your name is anymore. It's Bob now. Like what your Adam's apple is trying to do while you listen, listen very carefully. Yesterday we saw in this city four acts of looting, and three shooting deaths. Today, city hall has been fire bombed, and there was a brazen attack by the members of the police force using weapons of war and acronyms that I should only be hearing on the news in stories about places such as Iraq! Now you are here telling me that...that...that I can't relieve you of your duties after you declined to inform me or anyone that you knew stolen military equipment is in the area? After you tried to deflect blame from one of your subordinates for her part in the attack that I just mentioned by claiming the military unit that she played a part in killing one and injuring dozens of was acting illegally to detain her?"

By this time her head had lowered and she had dropped her voice to a deadly serious whisper.

"Let me tell you what is going to happen now Bob. Are you listening to me?"

He nodded, frozen solid, as the heavy breaths of the Mayor fogged his glasses.

"You are going to coordinate with General Boyd and his deputies to secure this hospital until such time as the wounded from the attack at the Blackberry commercial district are able to be evacuated. You will tell General Boyd all that you know and let him, and his team, determine whether or not it is important for them to know what grade you got in third grade math. Finally, I will warn you now, if an attack against citizens of our country, any living thinking being anywhere, occurs because of your actions and lives are lost. If you are not the first person next to that life that you allowed to die to pick up their body...I will kill you."

Worthington had been frozen before, but now it seemed as if his heart had stopped. With tiny twitches of her glaring yellow eye, McLean watched him carefully as the vapor from her voluminous heated breath curled around the man less than a meter from the corner of her snout. After several long minutes of everyone watching this mute man suffer what he had brought down on himself, enough ice thawed in his frozen neck to allow him to nod arthritically. McLean's head withdrew to its lofty position above, half hidden by the falling snow.

"Did that sound like a threat to you council president Elaine Clegg? I think I should be reported if it was."

Elaine looked like she was the one that wish she could be doing the threatening. "I didn't hear a thing Mayor McLean."

"Good! Off you go then, Mister Poopy attitude! Council President, I must ask one last favor from you and the council before they loosen their ties and undo their hair for the night. We may have need of a special observer to follow our dear Bob to ensure he doesn't stray from his duty. One that can assume his position if needed. Can that be arranged?"

"I have just the man in mind Mayor. I'll see to it that we vote on the matter and inform him right now."

"Thank you, get some rest Elaine. I don't think we're going to get any again for quite a while.

"Oh! Oh, what fun! The press is here!" The mayor dismissed the two and exclaimed brightly as an Army Major from the convoy, waiting quietly off to the side, grabbed Worthington's elbow and walked away with him.

A pair of white Sprinter vans with chain wrapped rear tires flailing at the snow and local news channel designs on their sides crept into the parking lot and stopped. With their high beams on and pointed right into the gaggle of children of the egg who grumbled at the intrusive light.

Soldiers approached the vans and checked their credentials, after they had already breached the damn perimeter, and pointed them off to the side away from where shelters were going up. One being erect already, a phalanx of nurses appeared to coerce a young female covered in bandages into the tent. A male (Grasshopper), one of the two unknowns that had been accompanying the mayor and the convoy, pushed aside the end panel as it closed to provide companionship to the little child. She had lost her eye, my throbbing left one told me. Her name was (Susannah), and she had watched armed men surround the apartments her family was in three days ago and set fire to it. They shot anyone who ran from the fire. She didn't know why.

The only thing I could do, was help her with the pain.

One team of reporters headed in the direction of me and my companions. Weary minds roused by shouted questions and flared into irritable anger. Hisses of warning to "Go!" went unheeded. I had no interest in talking to them. Kim would have if she had been awake. I would have too. But continuing my wife's public relations crusade wasn't something that appealed to me at the moment.

A wave of sensation from me shot towards them, causing their camera lights to dim and interference to erupt in their view screens. A feeling of disquiet and unease worked at the edges of their consciousnesses and the hissed warnings of the other fell into silence as the news crew shifted away without even realizing why they were. Angelica came storming out of the emergency entrance and yelled for all media to follow her. Leading them away where one reporter was already waving a smart phone at Boyd for a soundbite.

Sighing, I turned away so that both eyes were outward until an hour later when I felt a pat on my snow-covered front leg. Bent outside the circle of heat a man stood next to it, as I flared the scales to slough off the snow, wearing full battle rattle and looking at me with NVGs flipped upwards on his helmet.

"General Boyd says you're all relieved. Get some sleep sir or uh ma'am, we've got it from here."

"The name's Tom, and thanks."

He went back to his MRAP and scrambled up the back ramp. I could hear him muttering to himself before the hatch sealed with a clang. "Right...so that one's a man. How the hell can you tell?"

Right, how can you tell he's a man if he's got no damn balls?

Making up what I thought would be her response was a painful reminder that wherever Kim was, it wasn't here with me. Yet there her body was next to me, unresponsive while two men made measurements of her amputation. Only a pinprick glimmer of light, her heat, and our slumbering children to let me know that she was alive. Not the ball of fire and life that I was a part of. As she was a part of me.

Vibrations tickled the scales of my paw. Carefully extracting my hand, I nudged a Navy medic nearby to ask him to answer the call. At first I just heard the heavy breathing of a child of the egg. Until...

"...I'm scared Dad. I'm scared for mom, for you, for me, and above all for Luke and Lucy. Why do people hate us so much for what happened? I mean...someone tried to drive a car bomb into you and m...m...mom when all you n...n...needed was he...he...help!"

"Irma...my little fireball..."

"Dad!" She cried, "Come home! Bring mom! I'm...I'm...scared! I...I'm not...not...not like you two, I don't know if I can be strong for my little sister and brother!"

God, how my heart burned to sweep her up into my arms and just hold her. I wish I could tell her that everything was going to be alright. Even if it was a lie. Where is that damn fool Jessie? He should be there for her if neither I nor Kim could be.

"Is that what you think Irma? You think because you're scared that you can't be strong for your brother and sister? Well, I got news for you, kiddo. Your mom and I have been fucking terrified ever since we watched your hand turn black and twist into the shape that you're probably looking at right now.

"Everyday we wake up we do in fear that we may learn something about ourselves that is even stranger than what we already are. That we will see some new low that humanity will sink to. Some depravity that was festering beneath the surface and looking for an opening to come into the light. But everyday we roll to our feet and greet the day anyways. For you, for Luke and Lucy, for the children that have yet to come. For the hope that we can make a difference in the world that we couldn't before. For the hope that one day the world will be a better one for you to grow up in. To bring your own children into the world that you made better for them as we have for you.

"My little fireball, humanity has lost its way. My deepest, deepest regret is that I played a part in bringing things to the point that you had to be one of the ones to join us in paying the cost of what we were doing to ourselves and our environment. If for one second we thought that you were in danger, we would have never left to come here to reunite a family. But because we had trust in those there with you, we had faith in you to be strong for yourself and your brother and sister. I love you honey, and I want the world to be one that I would be proud to leave to you. To do that, your mother and I were willing to help strangers reunite. For a tiny part of this broken world to heal. Even if it meant risking harm.

"Even in the blood that was spilled there is hope to make the world a healthier place. New advances in medicine are occurring right now because of what happened to your mother. Learning that can be applied to other uses in medicine..."

"...but I don't want things to be better for other people! I want things to be better for us!" Irma exclaimed, to my disappointment.

"Irma, you have to be better than that. I know you're better than that. Do not be selfish, honey. Thoughts like that are the reason why we are in the position that we are in. Kim and I had a chance to make more happiness in the world and we took it. In the end, it didn't end up the way we wanted it and we learned. We have learned so much while we've been down here trying to help others. I wish I could show you...I think the reason why we've become what we have. Why we attract so much special attention from the aliens."

Her breathing evened as her staccato broken sobs eased. For a few minutes I listened to the whisper of her scales as she breathed slowly in and out. There was a flurry of rustling as she shifted position before she spoke again.

"Luke and Lucy are with Angie and four other children that have come here. Jessie is wrapped around all of them asleep. He and Angie are doing that funny thing we do with lavender, but I can't sleep.

"Dad...daddy? Can you tell me a story? I'm...I'm sorry for acting like such a five year..."

"Of course I will honey. Of course I will. Did your mom or I ever tell you about when you first spoke and what your mom did..."

Happily, I recounted to her how Kim had rushed headlong through our home at the time and broke her big toe on a dinner chair searching for some way to record her first child's first words. My scales rose and fell as did my emotions with each painful, funny, cherished part of the memory. Waves of thought brought the story to life to those around me. One mind after another waking to feel as Kim, and I, felt that day. Those next to me listening in that were parents themselves sighed blissfully as the feeling of our pride gently caressed their minds. The youngest laughed as I did, at the memory of Kim's explosion of artful comments flying out of her lips as she danced on one foot.

Spinning my tale to include every feeling, every emotion had everyone that wandered nearby with no pressing business stopping to listen. To become enmeshed so thoroughly in the memory that they lived it through my powerful empathic ability. By the time I heard the wistful sigh of everyone that had ever felt the touch of a lover's caress as I remembered the taste of Kim's mouth that special day, Irma's breathing had faded into the deep rhythm of sleep. A youthful sleepy voice that I couldn't place came from the phone.

"Bye-bye! Happy night for you..."

And the connection went silent, while I stared with downcast eyes at the phone. A great hand found mine, and for a fleeting second, I forgot what the situation was with my heart leaping into my throat.

"Kim?" I chirped, hopeful. Only to feel the weight of my fins drag my head down. Virginia gave me a sad smile and shook her head.

"Tell us another story, Tom. Can't you feel your children listening? Can't you feel how for just a moment, no one was out here in this cold snowy parking lot? We were all there with you, the day that your little girl said her first words. Help those that are so weary find peace in the feelings of love." She paused as her tongue flashed out to lick clean saliva building up at the corner of her ruined jaw.

"No...no that isn't fair to you. If you will lend me your voice, let me tell a story of happy days and times of my own. Can you Tom?"

I knew exactly what she meant and created a new network at which she was the center. With any and all that cared to hear we passed that night, trading stories that each teller shared in ways that could only be felt, and never told. Beneath unfurled wings, we shared each other's warmth. At the changing of each story, my reach grew further and further, until hundreds of minds listened and felt as we did. Dim figures appeared in lit window frames to press hands to the cold panes in solidarity. A warm glow spread out, pushed by myself, to ease the dark thoughts and pain that needled my senses.

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[[N1]](#_msoanchor_1)Stopped here at 2145 29Jun2020