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Whoa!!! Yes, I'm still alive, still trying to get some writing done. So, in lieu of my typical chapter-by-chapter installments with little to no edit work, I bring you Andromeda Rising, Chapters 1 to 7, in a complete set. I have done some edit work to chapters 1 through 6, and for those following, you would know that chapter 7 is an adition to this, which has also been edited before posting in a rare move by me. So, albeit this may be long and cumbersome for some, I hope you all enjoy this segment of Andromeda Rising. Btw, I know that some of the transitions are going to be rough here, but copying from MS Word has its issues, and the dividers I put in the subsections of the chapters are not transfering over. So I hope you all aren't too messed up by this lol.

Andromeda Rising I

"It's her..." Matthew whispered at the window, his breath fogging the hard plastic material that separated him from the vacuum of space. His bony, pale-skinned hand was splayed out on the clear pane, so close to touching the corpse that floated outside his ship. "I finally found you, my love."

Tak was simply watching the display with a dark shiver down his spine. He shifted in his seat, the aging leather piece creaking against his weight. He was an unusual sight, gray-furred all over and with a rat-like face. His ears were two large discs planted higher up on his skull than a normal human being's. His fat, flabby body was pressed to the pilot's control station in front of him. "You ready to pull her in, captain?"

Matthew remained silent. He gently stroked at the plastic. His long red hair was pulled back in a pony tail that reached below the shoulder blades, and his thin frame barely seemed to be able to support the jacket and black pants the Eternal being wore. Just outside the ship there floated the body of a woman. She was like some gruesome apparition, her long red hair flowing around her head, swept back from the force of the vacuum that drew her out of an airlock so many centuries ago.

"Captain?" Tak asked, wanting this sickening little moment to be over.

Finally, Matthew turned towards Tak. His hollow cheeks and sharply defined jaw bones were almost skeletal in nature. His red-iris eyes were terrible to look at, and yet his body had a youthful grace it had carried for nearly two millennia. "What is it, Tak?"

"Should we bring her in?"

"Her? Her name is Elizabeth," Matthew said in an odd little whisper, whipping around suddenly to stare at her. "Oh my little Liz, I have missed you so much," he said, his voice choking up. Matthew turned towards the back of the bridge, passing his chair at the head of the three seats that occupied the bridge and on past Tak. He roughly twisted the wheel for the doorway and threw it open, shouting behind him, "Turn Persephone around!"

Tak turned in his chair slightly so his arms could sweep over the control panel, his belly rubbing against the edge of the countertop-style controls, and his pudgy furred fingers punched in the commands with a certain grace that seemed unusual for the obese rodent-like creature.

Matthew could feel the ship's gravity compensators reacting to the movement of his ship. He stopped by a hatch in the floor, kicking the foot plate beside it. The hatch opened with a hissing sound, and Matthew descended the ladder to Storage Deck 1. Once his feet hit the steel scaffolding that surrounded the outside rim of the cavernous cargo bay, the lights came on. The whole cargo bay filled with the sterile white light. Above was the lower hull of the main part of the ship. Below, a huge expanse of space could be seen with steel walkways encircling it in an ever-narrowing pattern towards the bottom of the cargo bay. At the bottom, stacked perhaps three stories high, were the supplies for the Pelican-class cargo ship, named as such because the fuselage, or "beak," had a large, pregnant-belly shape cargo hold hanging beneath, reminiscent of a pelican's bill when viewed from the side.

Matthew began walking around the long walkway around the upper rim of the cargo hold towards the airlock at the rear. Hanging from the top of the hold were several cables and beams of varying types and with differing kinds of straps specifically designed to carry planet-based vessels for trans-planet shipment.

Once Matthew was in the anteroom to the airlock, Tak had positioned the ship so that Lizzy was positioned right outside the airlock door. Matthew could see her as he entered the airlock, a small semicircle of windows revealing her frozen face of shock.

"Ready when you are, cap," Tak said over the intercom. Matthew hardly seemed to take notice of the disembodied and crackling voice. He took firm hold of a bar over the airlock door, slipped both feet into rings bolted on the floor for stability, then punched the emergency release button.

Wind raged around Matthew's ears, howling loudly as the lock opened up on empty space. His free hand whipped out, grabbed the woman by the shirt, and pulled her in quickly. The air had barely finished escaping the lock before he already had Lizzy on the floor and was hitting the emergency release once again, closing the hatch. The chamber refilled with fresh air immediately, and Matthew knelt beside the frozen corpse, recovering quickly from the sudden painful vacuum that had engulfed him for a brief few seconds. His raging, boiling blood normalized, and the pain was gone just as he rolled the frozen corpse onto its back. A tentative finger reached up, touching at her hair ever so gently. Matthew smiled warmly, tears welling up in his eyes.

What happened next would have been a miracle of medical science when Matthew was a young boy. The color started coming back to Lizzy's cheeks, her body warmed, and suddenly her body jolted itself back to life. She drew in a long, sharp gasp. Then came the screaming.

Calmly, Matthew picked up the mummy-like body that was screaming like a banshee. He marched her up to the main corridor of the ship, heading once more in the direction of the bridge. Once he was about to get to the hatch marking the bridge, however, he hit a panel beside a doorway to his left, opening another hatch. Inside was a small infirmary where he lay her down. The previously frozen, unloving corpse kept screaming. Matthew kept smiling.

"Where am I?" Elizabeth croaked. She was just now waking up after over a day of being purposefully held in a drug-induced sleep. It felt like the mother of all hangovers was growing in her head. Even as she put her palm to her temple, Elizabeth started to wonder what the hell a hangover was, and why she thought about that.

"You're on board my ship, Elizabeth."

Lizzy tried to sit up, but as she did so, the pain that shot through her body was too excruciating. She fell back with a sharp gasp. "Who are you?"

"You've still got some damage to your body, you need to rest until the nanites have fully amassed their numbers again."

Lizzy didn't even know what the hell nanites were, much less who was talking to her. "Slight damage? I feel like I got hit by a truck."

"More like ejected from an airlock and forced to float in space for fifteen hundred years, but generally, I suppose the concept is the same."

"Ejected? Into space?" Lizzy said. This time she did sit up, and fought the urge to puke as she did so. The room began to spin ever so slowly, and gravity seemed to keep deceiving her in which direction it wanted to take. In a shadowed corner there stood the man who was talking to her. Medical equipment surrounded her in a smallish infirmary. It all seemed so alien, however. The technology did not look familiar. Then again, she couldn't really imagine what was familiar. Everything seemed so hazy.

"How much do you remember, Lizzy?" The man in the shadows asked.

Elizabeth thought about it. She couldn't quite put anything together. Scrambled images, vague thoughts came to mind. She remembered her grandmother catching her as she jumped into her arms. She remembered a boy from her school she was crushing on named Aaron. She remembered a college party. Anything after that was black. "I remember I was studying journalism at NYU."

The man sighed heavily. She could see his hand come up to his face, rubbing over his temples. "It seems your brain damage was far worse than I thought. Your scans showed significant synaptic damage in your memory center before the nanites could repair it.

"What's that mean?"

"It means, in all likelihood, you will never have all your memories back," he said. His voice sounded a little snippy, and Lizzy found herself wondering who the hell this guy was and what her recovery meant to him. It was then she began really processing what he was saying about what had happened to her.

"And you said fifteen hundred years... How is that possible?"

The man stepped forward into the light, and Lizzy gasped at the sight. His slightly open mouth showed up a set of pearly white fangs coming from his top and bottom jaws. She looked at this bony frame, his white skin, his red eyes and hair. She wanted to scream in fright, but felt like she would pass out from pain if she did. "What the hell are you?" she managed to choke out. "What is this?"

Matthew picked up a mirror and pointed it at Lizzy. This time, she did scream. The red-haired and -eyed Eternal fainted and fell back onto her examination table.

Just then, Tak entered the room. Having heard the scream, he looked down at the passed out woman that had been floating like a chunk of ice outside the ship only a day ago. "Didn't take it too well?"

"She doesn't remember shit," Matthew half-growled, punching the wall hard. A huge dent formed in the plated steel where his hand it, but he also staggered back from the pain of the impact. His broken fingers quickly began to repair themselves. The excruciating pain was almost like a drug for Matthew, though, as he stared at his own hand. Tak only turned away, wishing he didn't have to hear bone grinding and reforming.

"What now?" Tak said with a heavy sigh.

"Recap everything when she wakes up. Explain the history of Eternals and half-breeds. I'll be getting us home as soon as possible."

"You don't want to watch over her? I mean hell, cap, you've been obsessing over this woman for well over a thousand years."

"She's not the woman I knew when I lost her, and letting her get too close knowing that could be dangerous," Matthew sighed. Despite the youthfulness of his look, he looked like he had just aged fifty years. The defeat in his face was almost too hard to look at. Almost. Tak still got creeped out by the sight of him.

Matthew strode out, leaving Tak with the unconscious Elizabeth. A few minutes later, she came to. When she saw the fat half-human, half-rodent hybrid sitting on the examination chair, she screamed and passed out again. This was going to take a while, Tak realized.

In a system not very far from the so-called "north" end of the Horse Head Nebula, a planetary defenseman sat idly at his post, reviewing requests for dock between the only three or four ships that bothered to come out to this station. The young white rabbit-like half-breed was seated at his planetary defense post, wearing a uniform that wasn't quite up to code. His collar was undone, his nametag was missing, and he didn't even bother wearing regulation leathers on his feet. He routed the ships to their respective trajectories for landing at one of the two major cities on the planet (major, in this case, being a very liberal term), then leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. The cadet did what he usually did at this point, and fantasized about what he would have been doing had he not joined the interplanetary defense forces. Or perhaps if he just could've avoided pissing off a certain high-ranking officer by screwing around with his daughter and then breaking her heart. He wouldn't be hovering over this lame excuse of a terra-formed planet. He probably would be lounging back home on Hithos on leave instead of being caretaker for a crappy mining planet nobody cared about anymore.

It was just as he was dozing off that the station he was on suddenly rocked violently to one side, throwing him from his chair. The alarms were screaming immediately, and he rushed back up to the counter, his right shoulder dislocated, to see what the hell was going on.

A massive singularity was suddenly forming only a couple thousand miles to starboard. Just as the base started to strain from the effort of not getting drawn in, everything was suddenly thrown to port as another singularity formed, this one another couple thousand miles to the other side.

Then, by some mercy of the powers that be, the station stabilized, and the cadet managed to get back to his chair, his entire right arm aflame with agony. He used his left hand to pull up the monitoring systems. The cameras of the station kicked on, but all he could see to either side of the station were two solid gray walls. He scrambled to pull up the entire network of protective equipment, looking towards the phenomenon. It wasn't until he cycled through the images from observation equipment hovering over the planet's moon that any of the cameras were far enough away to see what was going on. Two massive ships had suddenly appeared to either side of him, both of them in the shape of tapered crosses. The cadet gasped, activating every defensive system he could. Before so much as one shot was fired off, however, the entire works, planet and defense networks were rendered ineffective by molecular disintegration.

Just as quickly as the two alien ships appeared, they disappeared. Fortunately enough, the cadet, along with the several hundreds of thousands of planet inhabitants, didn't feel a thing. Unfortunately for the moon that depended on the firm grip of its parent planet, it was flung towards the black spot in the heavens that marked the top of the horse's head of the Horse Head Nebula. Ultimately, it was doomed to emerge on the other side of the nebula, many eons later, diving into a hellacious quasar.

Andromeda Rising II

It had been more than a week since Elizabeth had been brought back to life. She was coping rather well, but her memories refused to get any clearer than they were the day she woke up. She was introduced to Byirnah, a hefty brown bear female that filled the narrow ship's corridors too much to allow easy passage. Byirnah wasn't fat, exactly. It was more an issue of her being built like a Mack truck. She seemed rude and uninterested, as was typical, according to Tak. Lizzy also met their navigator, a diminutive male who looked to be some family of rodent, though Lizzy could hardly tell. His name was Y'thrix, and a hefty pair of glasses rested heavily on his muzzle. It was all so overwhelming, encountering these half-blooded creatures that spoke and walked like humans. The entire time, she saw almost nothing of their captain but for quick glimpses from around corners.

Lizzy was sitting at the mess table, which was in one of the only two rooms in the entire ship that had a skylight window, the other being the captain's quarters located fore and one level up from the mess. She kept arching her head back to look up. Every time, she saw the passing multitude of colors as various streams of radioactivity, dust, and even solid matter slipped around the tachyon field being generated by the ship. Tak had explained that the tachyons, by their very property of being able to slip through any kind of material, enabled them to pass through stars, planets, and nebulae. The only things they had to avoid were the various sources of super-massive naturally occurring gravity wells in the galaxy. Quasars, black holes, and even neutron stars still collapsing in on themselves were too powerful for them to safely pass through. The influencing gravity would dramatically change their trajectory. Lizzy wondered what each passing band of color meant as they slipped through the fabric of space-time. Was that purple band a planet? The orange a small nebula? There were so many things she had yet to learn from this seemingly endless cavalcade of information, and yet she somehow retained so much of it. It was eerie. Did she always have such a capacity for learning?

Still, Lizzy could only look up so often. She was ravenously hungry--again. She had eaten a huge, filling breakfast, a brunch, and a lunch consisting of three pounds of steak of unknown origin. And here she was, it being still a couple hours before dinner would officially be served, downing two gallons of ice cream. She was already sick of the butterfat creaminess of it after the first half gallon, but she was too hungry to stop.

Matthew stepped into the mess from the corridor that was aft of the dining area. Seeing Lizzy, he tried to turn around and head the other way, pretending he remembered something he had forgotten.

"You're avoiding me," Lizzy said flatly. Matthew stopped in his tracks.

"Yes."

"It wasn't a question. I just want to know why. What did I mean to you in this past life I apparently had more than a thousand years ago?"

"I would think you would have seen the pattern by now, considering what you are."

Elizabeth wondered at the comment indicating her current state of existence, but wouldn't be distracted from the subject at hand. "I know what the patterns say. Why be so cryptic, though? Just tell me from your own mouth what this was between us."

"It doesn't matter," he said flatly. "Your memories are gone. You will never be Lizzy again."

"I'd at least like to get to know who she is."

Matthew sighed, looking at her with sad eyes. His face still had that drawn, defeated look it did the day she was revived. "I shouldn't even be considering this. You really want to know?"

Lizzy nodded.

"Fine. File number P-seven-seven-four-one. Access code is thorny rose."

Elizabeth tried to find something to write with, but even as she did, she realized her memory wasn't letting go of the information. In fact, it had been surprisingly easy to learn all that Tak had to teach her. She had even picked up all three of the primary languages, which were based all on English--which was referred to as the Eternal language, thanks to the fact only the Eternals possessed the language for so many eons--as well as the Chinese and Spanish that dominated other factions of Eternals in the Milky Way. Lizzy assumed this had something to do with her nanites--or "little helpers" as she had come to call them.

"Alright, I'll look into it. P-seven-seven-four-one, access code thorny rose." Even as Lizzy said it, she felt she should know some sort of significance with the access code, but it evaded her. "Is this really necessary? I want to talk to you personally about this."

"It's necessary. Because I don't," he replied, walking across the small mess hall towards a small set of stairs that led to his quarters.

"Can I at least ask you one thing?" Lizzy asked. Matthew paused on the first couple of steps.

"You can ask, but I can't promise an answer."

"Am I always going to be this hungry?" she asked in a slightly whining tone, looking down at the slowly melting ice cream.

"It gets a little better once the nanites have replicated their numbers sufficiently enough, but yeah. You'll get used to it over time. Eventually you find you can deal with hunger pains much more easily."

"How long until eventually happens?"

"I'd guess it took me about three hundred years or so," Tak said. Lizzy looked dismayed. "Hey, at least you won't look like Tak, no matter how much you consume," he chuckled. For a moment, Lizzy had a glimpse of the man that used to be there, inside that empty, ghostly shell of what looked like a youngish guy with the world on his shoulders. With that, he took his leave, and headed up to his room.

Soon after, Lizzy found herself in quarters she had been assigned to for the duration of their journey home to Earth. She was pulling up the file specified and began reading.

March 12, 2195

I have finally woken up after what my doctor tells me was a week-long fight with this Red Plague. The whole hospital is buzzing with excitement about me, apparently. I am one of the first to survive this horrible disease. Doctors are still running through their backlogs on my treatments to figure out what they did that might have triggered my recovery. Already I am feeling much stronger, better even than how I felt before the disease hit me. And the oddest thing yet: the tumor in my lung I was scheduled to get operated on has disappeared. The doctors don't know how or why, but they suspect an intrinsic change in this nanovirus.

I think I can even see my hair growing back. I haven't had a full head of hair for over a hundred and fifty years. My joints are hurting less, and the mild Alzheimer's is virtually gone now.

Lizzy blinked, sitting back in her chair. She began digging through files and found what she was looking for: a birth record for Matthew. She had her hand over her mouth in shock as she read what it said, listing his birth at January 28th of 2014. That would make him over 181 years of age, she realized. She would have to do some more research on medical advancements of the 21st and 22nd centuries, she realized.

Just as Lizzy was about to start digging further into how Matthew had achieved such an astonishing age, Tak came on the intercom. "All hands to the bridge. There is a high priority message from Earth."

Soon, every hand aboard the cargo cruiser was on the bridge. Matthew was standing with his arms crossed just behind the captain's chair, which he'd invited Lizzy to sit in out of courtesy. She thought rather thoughtful of him. Byirnah was leaning against the rear hatch, wearing what looked like a rag that clung limply over her shoulders. It looked like a Mexican poncho, she realized without having any reason to think that. She couldn't even think of what a real Mexican poncho looked like. It was covered in grease stains and whatever else Byirnah had been working on. A pair of baggy pants hung off of the brown bear's hips, equally stained and ragged-looking.

Y'thrix was in an odd kind of blue leotard, and his hands were sweeping over the navigation terminal, which was on the port side of the bridge, as he made a course correction for Persephone.

"Alright, Tak," Matthew said, nodding towards the two large plastic composite panels that made up the conical front of the bridge. The pair of windows seemed to melt away, concealing the flowing waves of tachyon bombardment and replacing it with a wider screen with some odd central symbol that looked like the letter V with the right arm having two lines to make it like an arrow. It was bold and red, seemingly to indicate a danger.

Suddenly the image disappeared, and a harsh-looking woman who was also an Eternal came onto the screen. Her features were angular and sharp, and she looked young enough to be a teenage girl. Her red hair was cropped short and slicked back behind her ears. "This is a top priority message to all Eternal-run ships and colonies throughout the galaxy," she began.

"Several days ago, a mining colony outside the Horse Head Nebula ceased communications with us. Ships arrived at the location yesterday to investigate, and report that the entire planet is gone along with any evidence of it or its satellites."

Lizzy looked up at Matthew. More worrying than the woman's news was the look on Matthew's face. He had the kind of troubled look that told Lizzy that he'd never before heard of such a thing. Her stomach rumbled in protest.

"Only hours after the discovery, another much larger system--New Zhong guo--reported a distress call. Several military ships were dispatched at maximum speed, arriving only minutes later. New Zhong guo was gone. What was more disturbing, however, was this image one of the ships managed to take just as it came out of warp speed."

An image came on the screen, replacing the woman's face. Four very large cross-shaped vessels were in the image. "These ships are being seen at a distance of four hundred thousand kilometers of distance, to give some perspective. They are believed to be the very same ships encountered in the several attempted missions to make the crossing to Leo I, which remains the only galaxy in the orbital space of the Milky Way that we have yet to at least partially explore, as each attempt has been brought to an abrupt end by these aliens.

"Until now, there has been no open hostility shown by this alien race. We are unsure of their capabilities, but their technology obviously outmatches our own. Once these images were taken, the four ships immediately disappeared in what our sensors tell us were singularities of some kind. We don't know how they destroyed these planets or what they are using to travel across the universe, but we do know that if you should encounter these vessels, you are ordered to avoid at all costs. No military vessels are authorized to assist any planet or ship facing these aliens at this time. That is all."

The image and the voice cut out abruptly, and all they were left with was the swirling colors of the tachyon field. The bridge remained silent for a long time. Elizabeth was the first to break it. "What are we going to do?"

"Nothing," Matthew replied flatly. "We have to get you back to Earth, first. Then we'll figure out where we go next.

"What if Earth is next?" Elizabeth asked.

"Well we'll just have to pray that's not the case," Matthew said flatly. "We'll be there in nine more weeks." He turned around and started for the door. "If they keep the pace they've shown thus far, chances are Earth will be around for a while. There are thousands of inhabited planets in the galaxy."

Matthew turned up the narrow staircase that led to the second level and the door to his room, moving quickly and fluidly, slamming the door shut before anyone could ask any further questions.

Sitting at his desk in his quarters, Matthew pulled up a monitor that had been recessed into the desk and hit a button. The screen came to life, and the same harsh woman's face was on it. Matthew had seen the little flashing light on his control panel on the bridge. A comm. channel was open and hailing them on his private frequency.

"I thought you were on Earth," he said simply, looking at Teresa's familiar face.

"I am."

"Does the Council know how much energy you're burning just to have a direct chat with me?"

"They know it, approved it, hell they even came up with it. I would have sent you an encrypted video. Much less personal that way. No loss in idle chat."

"I'm not complaining," Matthew said with a sad little smile.

"I saw your report on finding Lizzy. I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"She doesn't have any memories of me, or of the Council, or even you. You've always insisted I accept that she is gone, to find closure. Now, perhaps, that part of me is no longer in your way. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"No, of course not."

"At least not like this, hm?"

"You are being cruel, Matthew. I may not be able to help how I feel about you, but my heart does go out to you for your loss. I know how much she meant to you."

Matthew simply rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. "So why the massive waste of energy just to talk to me?"

"I need to figure out a rendezvous point with you as quickly as is possible."

"For what?" Matthew said, suddenly getting very snappy. The thought of having to meet with Teresa so soon after finding Lizzy, particularly in the state she was in, made him very uncomfortable.

"I need to begin working with her as soon as possible. I need to awaken her abilities again."

Matthew gritted his teeth, and extended a hand to pull up another screen. The faint whirring of the electric motor that brought up the new screen could be heard by Teresa. "Still using that older-than-dirt equipment, Matthew?"

"The simpler it is, the easier I can fix it. Such are the necessities when you're trying to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy. I don't exactly have a servicing station anywhere nearby." He turned to look at the new screen, which showed a three-dimensional image of their trajectory. "Can you get to Turanis Station in five and a half weeks?"

"Are you really asking such a thing? I can get there in a week with the resources they have available to me."

"The Council is deadly serious about getting Lizzy's abilities back, eh?"

"Very much so. We're not going back to Earth after we meet. We're going to an asteroid field where there is a hidden base we can work with. Earth has already begun evacuations. Only a skeleton government is going to remain planet-side. The rest of them are all taking refuge in the most obscure places they can find."

"These aliens have got you running scared?"

"You don't remember Elizabeth's prediction?"

"Of course I do. I just don't invest the religious zeal you people tended to see in it. She has been wrong, you know."

"She's been right far more often."

"So where is this base?"

"I can't tell you."

"Classified?"

"Unknown. Only one Eternal knew of its location. He programmed a navigational computer with the location, buried under a mountain of encryptions that can only be accessed when every council member assents to accessing it. And even then, its location remains anonymous. The computer simply guides the ship to the spot under a complete blackout of sensor arrays."

"Oh come on, is that really necessary?" Matthew said, sitting up and staring down at Teresa. "You can't be serious."

"I didn't think things were that bad, either, but they think so, and those are my orders. I'll meet you at Turanis Station."

Before Matthew could protest, the communication stream cut out. He wondered silently just how much antimatter was required to power the tachyon accelerator for such a long data stream connection. And to think it was only a few hundred years back that they couldn't even manage getting a message through the galaxy in a week.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, made her way to her small nook of a room. She sat down at the computer console. The passage she had been reading was still up. She skipped forward, trying to go to later entries. They stopped only a few months after they began. Many more entries were listed subsequently, but they were all encrypted by a code other than what Matthew had given her. She decided, instead, to read the last passage of what she could see.

December 25th, 2196

It's Christmas. Not that that means anything to people anymore. I guess I couldn't really call us people, either. That would be inaccurate. My fangs are sharp as ever, and I look like the young man I once was so many decades ago.

The night seems so dark and empty now. The world has maybe ten thousand people left of the twenty billion that once lived here. Communications are still in the process of being reestablished by that small group in Texas I mentioned before. We don't even know if anyone out there is listening. For all intensive purposes, our planet may be the only one with people still alive.

There is hope, however. Elizabeth saw a string of lights setting down far off in the distance, much closer to New York City than we are. I suppose it's a search party from one of the other planets. If not that, then perhaps an alien race has finally established contact with us. A little late, methinks. Perhaps they've been watching humanity, waiting for this virus to awaken in our midst, and are now moving in to take over the infrastructure we have left behind. It's a dark perception of things, but this is a dark world now.

Speaking of Elizabeth, I cannot help but continue feeling this growing infatuation with her. I swear I keep catching her making eyes at me when we're tending to the day's chores, but I cannot be sure. I wouldn't really blame her. Where once I was a tottering old man barely holding himself up against so much as a fart in the breeze, I am now the strapping and strong young man I was once upon a time. My frame is still thin, but I continue to grow stronger. I feel like a teenager again, my emotions thunderous and intense. I guess there really is no replacement for real hormones.

I considered giving Elizabeth this little necklace I found in the market down the road. It was under a pile of rubble I was clearing to get to some batteries. I decided against it, however. Somehow, everything in this world just feels tainted now. With so many dead littering the corners of the earth, I'm not sure how humans are going to continue surviving as they have.

December 26th, 2196

We have reestablished communications! The lights were from a search party that originated in the Xixus System. What is so strange, though, is their method of surviving the Red Plague. Apparently, as the last living people of Earth expired, a discovery had been made in an obscure laboratory where they had been doing work with retroviruses. These viruses could rewrite very significant segments of DNA. The people we met were hardly people at all. They were all hybrids; humans mixed with felines that were common on their planet. Apparently planets all throughout the system are doing this. A few planets are like Earth, though, with too many dead to maintain communications and thus get word of this retrovirus in time.

I decided I would make this entry as a simple testament to a new turning point. While humanity has ceased to exist as we know it, there is hope for our survival. I see a great new age on the horizon, and it feels good to hope.

Lizzy smiled in spite of herself. She liked this Matthew. Facing a world where the odds are stacked against him, where death has filled every single home on the face of the earth, he continued to strive and work, even managing to write out his thoughts and entertain such romantic concepts as hope.

"What happened to you?" she whispered to the screen, biting her lip.

"I died when Elizabeth did," came his voice. Lizzy practically jumped out of her skin with a bit of a scream, whirling around. She hadn't even heard him pulling the latch to her quarters and opening it. But there he was, leaning against the heavy steel frame.

"How long have you been there?"

"Not long. You know, you really should read the entire thing, if you're going to know the story. Our first winter wasn't so easy."

"How long were we working together?"

"Since the beginning. We happened to be the only two survivors at our hospital. Three, if you count Henry."

"Who's Henry?"

"A janitor that was helping us get our wits about us after the plague. He died when he tried to move a supply truck out of the cargo bay. Chain broke and snapped him across the head."

Elizabeth winced. "You don't have to be so graphic."

"Hm? Oh, sorry," Matthew said indifferently. "I guess when you've lived through the apocalypse, you become a little desensitized."

"So why'd you come down here to talk to me, anyway?" Lizzy asked, suddenly not feeling so hungry for information about her past.

"We're changing course to meet with an old friend. She's going to be working with you to regain your abilities."

"Abilities?"

Matthew nodded slightly, considering how he was going to explain. "You were a bit of a gem amongst the Eternals. Your nanites not only repaired and enhanced your body; they enhanced your mind to a point unmatched by others."

"What kind of enhanced?"

"That, I think, might be best left unsaid until you start feeling out this ability on your own. If Teresa wants you to know, she can tell you herself. For the time being, know that it's very important you get it back."

"Is that why you were searching for me so passionately?"

"No. I was searching for you because... well, because of what we had once. Funding, however, isn't so easy to come by."

"Which is where my ability comes in. You search for me at the price of the Council having my abilities back into their fold."

"Pretty much."

"You were going to rescue your lover and just hand me over?"

"You underestimate me, Lizzy. I had every intention of coming back, returning their ship, and then disappearing with you to some dark corner of the galaxy."

"Wouldn't that make us fugitives from the main power point of the galaxy?"

Matthew shrugged. "They serve their purposes, but you're not a machine to be enslaved and used. Their intentions are good, but their means are not."

"The ends justify the means."

"That would be their policy, yes," Matthew said, sighing.

"So then why meet with one of their agents now?"

"Because we owe her. Plus, the alien presence is a game changer. There's no point to being fugitives when we don't have a council of overfunded, overly egotistical assholes looking for us under every rock and around every corner."

With that, Matthew turned to go. As he went down the hall, Lizzy stepped out behind him. He was strolling along like a man deep in thought. His hands were in the pockets of his dark gray trousers, his button-down shirt clinging to him like clothing a few days too old. "Hey." Matthew turned, eyebrows raised, arms crossing over his chest. "I'm starved. You want to get some grub?"

Lizzy and Matthew went to the mess hall, where Lizzy had two steaks, three potatoes, and loads of veggies. Matthew simply watched on, the slightest tinge of a smile touching at the corners of his lips. Still, his eyes seemed so sad and tormented, and Lizzy had a hard time looking at him as she ate.

Andromeda Rising III

The dreams started to surface sporadically at first. The first week they were hardly noticeable. The second, Lizzy just thought them nothing more than vivid nightmares. But as the evening of the fourteenth day came along, Lizzy went to bed with a nervous sensation in the pit of her stomach. She'd been researching so much lately, and her mind just wanted to gobble up more and more every passing day. Even as she lay down, she was reviewing the grammar structure of N'had'ka. It was the eighth language she would learn those two weeks, and by far the hardest. Many of the others were simple variants of the English she knew adapted for the particular needs of different half-breeds with their modified pallets and concepts. N'had'ka was the rogue's language, spoken beyond the territories of the allied planets. It was dark, guttural, and damn near impossible to pronounce for an Eternal human like her. It was originally created by the avian cultures in protest to the many English-based languages. It forewent any grammatical structure or common human sound, going completely off the basis of what the creators' avian instincts and sounds told them to do. The reptilian breeds of the galaxy quickly caught on to the language as well, making slight modifications, and it grew to be the most common language of the territories scattered throughout the no-man's land that lay between the Persephone and the allied planets.

Even now, Lizzy realized, they could be streaking through any number of these nefarious little hideaways she had been studying, which is why Matthew was so insistent on her getting the language correct, she supposed. He spoke it, but clumsily. She was already far beyond his capacity.

"I just haven't been practicing enough," Matthew said passively when she pressed him on the matter.

"I've been studying it for three days, Matthew. There's no way I should know the language so intimately already."

Lizzy thought of the face Matthew had. It was full of worry--and knowledge. He recognized what was happening with her, but would not tell. Already she knew this was how it was in that before-time too. All the other Eternals were enhanced, yes. But none of them quite so enhanced as her. And Matthew wanted it to be like they were then: not knowing what could be wrong--or so terribly right--with her.

"You know what's happening to me," she said flatly. Matthew shot a quick glance at Y'thrix. The three of them were in the navigation room, and Matthew had been showing Lizzy how to operate the system. She had become bored of it within ten minutes, having stepped far beyond what lessons Matthew and Y'thrix were giving her in her recognition of the patterns that lay before her like a road map. She was sure she could maneuver them through any system undetected, even without the protective tachyon field that enveloped the ship.

"I don't know what you are talking about," Matthew sighed as the humble-looking rodent stepped out of the room. Y'thrix knew much more about the social subtleties of his fellow bipeds than most. Lizzy watched him go. Y'thrix looked too lean and angular to be entirely rodent, she realized, which was why he had that narrow tongue and the strange-looking rat tail. Overall he could easily be mistaken for a mouse like Tak, but when looking closely...

Lizzy shook her head, realizing she was doing it again. She was using what little she knew about the extremely quiet little rodent and was pulling a Sherlock Holmes, figuring out so much about him off of so little. She didn't want herself distracted from the conversation yet again."I wasn't asking you, Matthew," she said angrily, coming back to the conversation. But Matthew was now more distracted by the look she had given the navigator.

"You were on a course of thought there," he said in regards to Y'thrix. "Don't stop."

Lizzy frowned. She wanted to continue this conversation, but somehow felt that this might have something to do with it. She brought up an image of the mouse in her head again. The long but too-wide snout, the feline-like eyes with the odd-looking pupils, the mouse ears that came to a bit of a point, and then there was that tail. She blinked, and already she knew what it was. The eyes weren't those of a feline, they were reptilian. "He's got reptile blood."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What reptile?"

Lizzy looked angrily at Matthew. "How the hell am I supposed to know--a crocodile!"

Matthew gave the slightest little smirk. "Listen, Lizzy. I don't want to give you this runaround, but believe me when I say you have to go darkly into this realm of self-understanding. Teresa will help glean some insights for you, but this is entirely your own journey."

"But why do I have to do it this way?"

"You'll know that, just as you know so many things you already shouldn't. Like how to access this entire navigation array... or perhaps how to hack into the files that go beyond December 26th of 2196."

With that, Matthew departed. Lizzy looked on, bewildered. She didn't know--and then she did. Or, at least, she thought she did. There was a pattern, vague but understandable.

That night, as Lizzy lay in her small cot, she turned to see the files that were still on display on her monitor. She'd been looking through them for a little while now, but she was forcing herself to get some rest. The password had been "bloody finger," only a slight variation on the pattern she had seen earlier that day. Thorny roses--like the password to the first part of the file--lead to bloody palms or, in this case, bloody fingers.

Even as she stared at the screen, Lizzy thought she could never sleep with so much rattling around in her head. She was wrong, though. Only moments later, she was sound asleep.

The dreams came in rapid succession, in massive droves, and varied widely. In one moment, she was standing atop the Empire State Building, overlooking a city that was now a giant slate of green jungle and screaming wildlife. Even the surface she stood on was like soil, with vines all around. The next moment, she was terrified, in agony, tied to a wall and being viciously beaten. They wanted to know something... something only she could know... if only she could... And then she was laying in bed beside Matthew. No, not beside. They had separate beds, but she was slipping out of hers, stepping over to his... Then it was the faces of so many half-breeds. Then it was launching up, up, up into space for her first time ever. It was an odd planet with a purple-tinged atmosphere; it was making love to Matthew, it was a firefight in a ship's corridor. Then, out of nowhere, everything went black.

Lizzy was just there, in the emptiness of her mind. There was nothing to see or hear. But then she started to feel something; something terrible. Lizzy knew what it was. She'd faced it twice before in her dreams. But it wasn't any easier. She could sense it closer, and closer, and closer still. The darkness of it filled her, making her want to scream in fear and agony and hatred all at once. She was nothing but a child now, curled up on the floor, uncovered and unclothed. The face that suddenly filled her perception was horrible. It was hardly able to be called a face. It had no mouth, no nose. There were only eyes. Dark. Hollow. Eyes. The face was like slime, but like granite. There was little form to it, or she simply did not want to see the form. Then it was the face of her captors that were beating her, then it was Julian, that asshole that tried to rape her in college, and then it was her father, standing over her naked form as the child she suddenly felt she was...

Lizzy sat up suddenly in her cot and screamed. She could hear through the thin interior walls that others had been woken up, and were on their way towards her. Looking down, she realized she was absolutely soaking in sweat. Her thin mattress was wet from corner to corner, her wooly blanket felt heavy and unyielding from how soaked it was. Her hair clung to her neck, dripping down her back.

The first to the door was Matthew. When he opened the hatch, Lizzy could see Byrinah standing behind him. Automatically, Matthew's knowledge was there on his face. Lizzy knew this had happened before by that expression. Still, she suddenly felt the intense urge to run to him, to have him wrap her in her arms, to whisper the way he always did in her ear. And then, Lizzy realized, she cared about Matthew a little too much for comfort. He was that source of knowledge--she tried to tell herself--that pillar she could hold to for support, that was all. Her intense emotions were a result of her wanting so badly to have someone--anyone--to just be there for her. And somewhere in the back of her head, Lizzy knew she was just lying to herself.

But instead of having Matthew come to her aid, he stood aside for Byirnah, and then looked down at the floor. She stepped through the doorway that seemed too small for her girth. The door was closed behind her, leaving Elizabeth alone with the large female.

Right away, Byirnah seemed to relax, and pulled out the wall-mounted chair that was on the wall opposite the cot. "Come here, Elizabeth," she said in a gentle, motherly tone. Lizzy could do nothing else but obey in reply to such a tone. She tried to find her feet, and realized she couldn't even stand. Byirnah put an arm under her and helped her up. "Come on, darling. It's alright."

Lizzy was guided to her chair and set down by Byirnah. "What's going on with me?"

"I'm not the one who would know, dear," Byirnah said, idly changing out the sheets of the bed. She felt at the mattress with one of those big furry hands of hers. She picked up the mattress and went to the door, handing it off to someone Lizzy could not see now that she was on the other side of the room. She assumed, however, it was Matthew.

"I'm sorry," she said in a whimpering kind of tone to Byirnah.

"Oh dear, don't be silly," she said in a tut-tutting kind of manner. "We've got plenty more where that came from. Now, strip for me."

"What?" Lizzy asked, a little shocked, staring up into the big but now seemingly kind face of Byirnah.

"Your clothes. They need to be changed unless you want to start growing something on yourself."

Lizzy stood, feeling rather awkward as she lost her shirt and pajama bottoms in front of Byirnah. She had an arm over her chest, and still hadn't taken off her underwear.

"You needn't be so modest around me, girly," she said. "I've been an acting den mother for the better part of two decades before I got recruited for this. Nothing I'm not used to seeing."

"Den mother?" Lizzy asked, sliding out of her panties and having a towel thrown around her. Pulling it close to her, she sat on the frame of her cot that was now bare of anything.

"It's something of importance amongst my people. Typically it's reserved for females like me..." she said, a sad little smile on her face.

"What do you mean?" Lizzy asked.

"I'm infertile," Byirnah said flatly. "The other females put so much importance on raising their cubs, but there is also great importance on building up our society that they must work alongside the men sometimes. I take the job of assisting them in raising their cubs."

"How does a den mother become a ship's mechanic?"

"I've always had a knack for it," Byrnah sighed as she hefted herself over to Lizzy's closet, finding something new for her to wear. "At the den where I watched all the cubs, I was always the one to fix anything that broke."

"Somehow, a ship's reactor seems a little more advanced than den equipment," Lizzy commented, drawing the blankets closer.

"Well it helps to take a few lessons here and there," Byirnah assented. "I hopped on board this mission to gain favor in the eyes of the Council."

"Why would that be important?"

Byirnah raised her eyebrows and turned to Lizzy. "Here I thought you had been studying history, dear."

Lizzy thought about it, realizing she had, in fact, been reviewing the power structure and who it was that controlled the thousands of mining operations throughout the galaxy. From where the raw materials flowed, there lay the source of power. Distribution of resources by the Council could often be arbitrary. "Right, sorry. I wasn't really thinking too much."

"It's alright. From the way you were screaming, I probably would be pretty shaken up, too." The big brown bear sat down beside Lizzy on the cot, making it creak loudly. She had a pile of new clothes in her lap that she allowed to rest there while a big, brown furry arm slid around Lizzy and hugged her tight. Lizzy didn't protest. Instead, she laid her head against Byirnah's arm and cried.

"I'm scared," Elizabeth whispered, wiping her face.

"So'm I, dear. So'm I."

"What's the news?" Matthew said, striding onto the bridge. He'd delivered the new mattress to Lizzy's room. Byirnah was the one who answered and accepted. He wasn't going to question her infinite motherhood wisdom. There was a reason he selected her for the job, just like how he selected a female bear for every mechanic job he'd had in the history of his searching for his Liz.

Tak rotated in the chair, his prodigious belly once again making a sighing whisper sound against the edge of the control panel as he did so. "Not good," he said. His face was dark. His gray fur was looking matted, and the black cropping of hair was falling flat to Tak's forehead. The trash bin beside the workstation was overflowing with the detritus of a feverish rate of food consumption. "Two more planets, cap."

"Shit," Matthew replied, sitting at the navigation station to review the information. Lyra was the one that stood out the most for him. Third planet to be colonized, it was located in the constellation that had once been known by the same name. The other was a neutral planet simply listed as TY-884 on the borders of the allied territories.

"Do we know anyone from either planet?" Tak asked, looking up at Matthew.

"No, thankfully. Lyra was like Earth. Complete dead loss except for the Eternals that made it through, and all the Eternals have been evacuated from there, anyhow. The other is generally pretty quiet. Minimal trading, they mostly kept to themselves if I remember correctly. Real separatist types, sans the separation. Like New Hampshire back in the day."

"What?"

"Never mind; just an old man making vague references again."

"Are we going to tell the others?"

"In the morning, we will. Let them get back to bed."

"Alright, I'll see you in the a.m. cap."

"Yeah, when you wake up," Matthew said. "Go to bed. You've been working for what, sixteen hours?"

"Yeah, but somebody's gotta keep an eye on things up here."

"I'll be here. Go sleep."

"Sometimes, cap, you're not as creepy as you look," Tak said, standing up. His chair rose a few inches, and the cushions reset themselves grudgingly, as if they expected to not feel the reprieve from Tak's weight for long. The flabby, jiggling pile of rodent he was squeezed past the rear hatch and down the corridor to his own quarters.

Sitting in the captain's chair, Matthew reviewed their trajectory, took note of any odd readings or variations, and then sat back to enjoy the multicolored display of tachyons ahead of him. After a few minutes, Byirnah came onto the bridge, standing beside Matthew. "She's asleep again. But she wants to talk to you."

"She's moving much faster than I expected."

"Which is why she needs you. Being a den mother for her is only going to go so far."

"Has she regained any memories?"

"I think so, but I'm not really sure. The things of which she spoke seem like they could have come from her super-perceptive nature. She's putting the pieces together very fast now. It's not long before she'll be the supercog she was."

"That's what I was afraid of," Matthew whispered.

"How long was it the last time--before this started to happen, I mean."

"Centuries."

Byirnah sighed, feeling for the poor girl. She reached out, placing a heavy and yet infinitely gentle hand on Matthew's shoulder. "I wish there was something I could do for you, cap. The whole galaxy'll be after her once it starts."

"Thank you, Byirnah," he said, holding onto her furred hand and gripping it tight. Had either of the two rodents aboard seen this, they wouldn't have believed it. Byirnah with a heart? Impossible. "Go get some rest, Byirnah. We're in for a hell of a time."

"Alright, cap. Goodnight," she whispered affectionately before marching off. She always did like Matthew better than the other cold and holier-than-thou Eternals she had met in their time. It almost seemed to her that, while the others thought they were these great creations, Matthew always saw himself as cursed, envying those of the mortal coil much more.

Just as Byirnah left, a red light started flashing on the control panel in front of Matthew. He sighed, stood, and locked all the latches before coming back to the panel. He pulled up a screen and hit a button. Teresa's face met his gaze.

"Good evening, Teresa," Matthew said, leaning back into his chair and keeping a calm composure.

"You mean morning. It's oh-four-hundred standard."

"Whatever you want to call it. Some are just returning from the bars at this very moment."

"Indeed." Teresa's voice was more formal, more clipped than usual.

"I'm guessing you have company with you?"

"I'm on the bridge of the Triton, yes."

Matthew smirked. He loved poking at the more formal Teresa. She only acted like this when there were eyes on her. Otherwise, he was sure she would not be sitting so upright, and the collar of her navy blue officer's uniform would be unbuttoned.

"How can I help you, captain?"

"We're a few thousand light years beyond Turanis at this time, Matthew. We decided to change plans. We will rendezvous at the following coordinates."

At that moment, another screen came on, displaying a nebula just under a week out from where the Persephone was located.

"Pretty ballsy, you know, meeting up there."

"We're aware of the risks. That's why we're meeting in the nebula instead of out in the open.

"And what of the Shol'krik?"

"Nothing they have could be a match against the Triton. Even en masse, we would annihilate them."

"Tough talk from a tough lady."

Teresa fought the urge to smirk at this. "How is our subject doing?"

"I don't know what subject you're talking about. Perhaps if you're a little less cryptic, I would understand."

"Elizabeth," Teresa snapped. "How is she?"

"Ahead of the curve."

"How far?"

"Let's just say it's a good thing you cut our rendezvous down to a week. I doubt it'll be that long, even."

"Stall her."

"Yeah, because I know how this whole thing works. You're the scientist, remember?"

"Isolate her from all information."

"A little harsh, don't you think?"

"She's dangerous, Matthew."

"And so are you. I'll see you in a week."

With that, Matthew cut the transmission, and returned his gaze to the tachyon field ahead of the ship. Things were moving too fast, he thought to himself. Over a millennium trying to find Elizabeth, and now every hour was becoming more critical.

Andromeda Rising IV

Elizabeth woke up with the alarm that rested in a small fixture over her cot. It read 0900, but it felt the same as any other hour on the ship. The past few hours of sleep had, thankfully, been free of dreams. She stretched and yawned, feeling rather hungry already. Standing, she noticed something very different about her room: There was a huge platter of food sitting on the floor, and the retractable monitor she had left open was now shut.

Curiosity overcoming hunger, Lizzy went over to the computer and tried to access it. Every time she pushed the button that would have brought the monitor and keyboard out, however, she would hear a diminishing chime that indicated her lack of authorization. Getting angry, she marched over to the hatch. When she tried to turn the wheel, however, it wouldn't budge. She punched the steel as she screamed out, "What the fuck!?" There was a dent now in her door, and bloody knuckles on her right hand.

Lizzy watched her torn knuckles, breathing hard as she watched the scratches heal up and disappear in a matter of minutes. Her jaw tightened with apprehension. She was going to have to get used to seeing such things.

Bringing her gaze down to the food, she saw a note sticking out from underneath the platter. She took it and opened it. All that there was on the note was a simple scrawl:

"You know too much. Your progress is far faster than we had imagined. Teresa fears for our safety and your own. I'm sorry."

Lizzy screamed out in anger and punched the door again, this time even harder. The steel was dented once more, this time higher and to the left of the first one.

Even through her anger, however, Elizabeth could not bring herself to avoid the food for very long.

Days passed. Every time Byirnah would bring her food and new bedding, Lizzy would press her for information on what was going on. She couldn't get any straight answers, but every time she asked a yes or no question, little ticks in Byirnah's expression gave away the answer. All she could figure out, however, was that they were getting closer to their meeting with Teresa, and Matthew had suddenly shut up about everything concerning this rendezvous. Nobody could glean anything from him. The only things that changed were the date on her clock and the number of dents in the door and walls. Lizzy had punched the walls so often her knuckles were starting to look like that of a flooring contractor's, with big, ugly calluses forming over each knuckle. The dreams still grew worse, and Lizzy felt like her head would explode from the intensity of them.

Finally, on day six, the last day before the rendezvous, there was success. Elizabeth managed to hack the access panel used to lock her computer--and by hack, I mean she tore it apart and rewired the panel.

The computer pulled up, Lizzy went to work accessing every file and folder on her existence and what she was. She tore through every bit of information she could. Research on why her nanites changed the way they did, what the extent of her ability was, and finally, what happened to lead to her "demise." Elizabeth started reading in growing intrigue. She came to a passage that was titled, "Testimony from the nefarious pirate, Nemitz."

Elizabeth was breathing hard. Her ribs were shattered--again. Nemitz was standing over her, a sick little grin on his face. Slowly, she healed up, but she could tell that her nanites were getting more sluggish. She hadn't eaten for days.

"Tell me what I want to know," the reptilian-looking creature said, standing over her with his hands on his hips.

"It doesn't work that--"

Lizzy would have said, "way," had the lizard hybrid's boot not connected with her face, shattering her teeth. Blood gushed from her mouth onto the floor of her little cell. The chain attached to the collar around her neck clinked as she tried to crawl away from Nemitz, only to receive a boot to her ass, pushing her onto the floor. The horrid little laugh that came from him only made things worse. It was far from human, more like a guttural clucking sound.

Slowly, Lizzy could feel the grinding and popping as her teeth reformed. The pain of it was there, but it was nothing compared to the pain she had just experienced in her ribs before that. She curled onto the floor, hugging her knees to her chest as she lay with her back to Nemitz. "Please, no more," she said, her words slurred as her teeth repaired themselves, sobbing as she did so.

"Shut up, bitch," he said, kicking her hard in the back. Lizzy could feel something rupture. Sometimes, she realized, being over-sensitive to the entire workings of your body was not such a great thing. She could hear Nemitz pacing angrily behind her. Then, out of nowhere, the entire ship rocked hard to one side, and the booming sensation of an explosive impact could be felt through the ship.

Nemitz was unprepared of this, and was thrown to the side, knocking his head hard against the wall. Lizzy slammed the back of her head against the same wall, feeling a horrid crunch there. For several blissful moments, all went black.

When Lizzy woke up, she saw Nemitz standing over her. The alarms were going off, the ship was in chaos. She knew she had just died there. The reformation of skull fragments in the back of her head told her that.

"You traitorous bitch," Nemitz was growling. "How did they know I would be here?" he demanded in a slithering kind of voice.

"I don't know."

"Bullshit!" he roared. "There's no way they could have known I would be all the way out here!"

Elizabeth smirked slightly. She knew what it was. Matthew had made it his obsession to explore every corner of the galaxy as much as possible. The man was a sponge for knowledge, and Lizzy was benefited by his influence. He would have put two and two together. Where else would a man go when he was in possession of the most powerful weapon that ever existed in the universe? Obviously, he would go where he saw the least threat of discovery: beyond even the outer limits of civilization. Besides her, Matthew was probably the greatest asset the entire armed forces possessed.

"Wipe that fucking smirk from your face," he demanded, picking her up by the hair. He unlocked her collar and began dragging her out the door and down the corridor.

All around them, hybrids were dashing back and forth. Most of them were reptilian, some were avian, and there were even a couple of rough-looking mammalian hybrids. The whole ship was in distress as the crew desperately battled for their lives.

"Where are you taking me?" Lizzy demanded over the blaring sirens.

"Where you belong," Nemitz said, taking a few turns before heading down the main corridor towards the stern. Lizzy had already figured it out. There were only two things down this corridor: the life pods and the airlocks, and there was no way Nemitz was going to let her live, by the way his face looked.

"Stop!" she begged, struggling. She tried to dig her fangs into his leg. Nemitz only gripped harder and gave her a kick.

By the time Nemitz had dragged Elizabeth to the air locks, she was exhausted from her struggle. He opened the hatch that led from the ante room to the lock chamber. It was a featureless tube-shape of dark metal with a four foot wide stretch of flat flooring. At the other end of where Lizzy lay, defeated, there was a hatch with a square pane of clear polyurethane for a window. Outside, there could be seen several military vessels giving chase to Nemitz's ship. The constant barrage kept shaking the Leviathan back and forth violently as Nemitz stepped into the control room alongside the lock. Lizzy looked over to the stretch of windows that were between her and Nemitz now. He had a sick little grin on his lips still. Lizzy took a deep breath, trying to make herself face her death bravely. After all, she had lived nearly five hundred years, far more than anyone could ask for. Still, she wanted so desperately to live.

Then Lizzy's thoughts turned to Matthew just as the red lights started to flash, warning of impending evacuation of the air lock. She suddenly didn't feel so brave anymore. All she wanted was on more kiss, one more touch with him. All she wanted was just another instant to say,

"I love you, Matthew."

And with those final four words, the air lock opened, and Lizzy was hurled into empty space.

Lizzy awoke in a series of gasping breaths, sweat pouring down her body again. She was in bed. She didn't know how she'd gotten there. She had been reading that last entry, describing the testimony of Nemitz, who had been picked up from a nearby planet after having used his escape pod to get out of the firefight that would ultimately consume the Leviathan. After that, though, nothing. It was like Lizzy had stepped right into the story and experienced every moment of it first-hand. And even now, she still felt that longing, aching feeling in her chest. Yes, she remembered Matthew now. She remembered him very well.

Then, as if summoned by some black magic, the latch for the doorway to her room slid out, and the door opened. In the doorway was Matthew, and he had a terribly guilty look painted across his face.

Lizzy dashed forward. Matthew tensed, then found himself very surprised by her passionate embrace. Her lips were pressed to his, her arms wrapped tightly around him, and her body curved up against his in a sensation that was all too familiar. Matthew had expected a banshee ready to rip his head off for her imprisonment. Instead he found something that was even more painful. Every memory of his blissful days alongside Elizabeth resurfaced, and tears were now streaming down his face.

Matthew grabbed each of her upper arms and pushed her back, holding her at length. "What are you doing?" he whispered, his voice choked.

"Matthew, it's me, your Liz. I remember now. I remember us."

For a moment, Matthew could have believed it. For a moment, he was standing at the edge of an abyss that he could have so easily fallen into. But when he saw the computer in her room reactivated, his heart dropped. "You enabled your console."

"And I read the testimony you had from Nemitz," Lizzy agreed. "It brought back my memories of that day. And I felt the kind of love we have, Matthew."

Matthew took Lizzy's hand. "I have to show you something."

Sitting in the medical room once again, Lizzy was staring at the map of her recent brain activity. The scanner was a specialized device that could trace recent firings of the synapses. Her mind was lit up like a Christmas tree.

"What does this mean?" she asked.

Matthew pointed at the right edge of her right hemisphere. "See how this part is very inactive?"

Lizzy nodded.

"It means your memories are not back. What you experienced is your first cognition dream," Matthew said, looking disappointed himself. He felt deflated and depressed all over again, much like he felt the day they picked Elizabeth up.

"What's a cognition dream?"

"Do you know of pre-cognizance?"

"The ability to see the future."

"Right. You have generalized cognizance. You can see past, present, or future. You were so good at it that the Eternals began referring to you as the "supercog," a super-cognizant being that sees beyond time. But it has its flaws."

Suddenly, so many things were falling into place in Lizzy's mind. She realized just why a pirate of a lizard-man would want to capture her and beat her into submission, why the Council thought her so valuable, and why it was so important that she have Teresa carefully monitoring her progress. "I see."

"By the look on your face, I believe you do. But let me just say this: your nanites have enhanced your mind somehow. Whether it is something in your mind that allowed for this evolutionary progression or something unique about your nanite infestation we were still trying to figure out. You also have the conscious ability to learn and piece things together far faster than anyone known."

"That's why I learn so fast."

"Yeah. We thought you were just gifted amongst the Eternals at first. But over time, those dreams started to happen, and we started to realize your pattern recognition was going much deeper than your conscious mind. Consciously you can only process so much, but subconsciously, you could piece together entire visions of events that were, are, or going to happen."

"My perception goes beyond the three dimensional."

"Basically, yes. The kind of complex pattern recognition required to see and know the things you do is beyond the ability of any other creature known."

"So... I don't have my memories back?"

Matthew closed his eyes and let his head droop. "No." His voice was flat, but seemed to take so much effort to maintain that evenness. "You experience these visions in the most familiar fashion possible so that your conscious mind can process them. In the case of Nemitz's testimony, you experienced it as if you were in your shoes. If, for example, you had a vision of me during a time while I was searching for you on this past voyage, you would experience things in my shoes. You would feel as I feel, see as I see."

"I could do this before?" Lizzy gasped, implications of the kind of intimacy with which she knew her lover of long ago flashing through her mind.

"Yeah," Matthew said simply, a somber-looking face meeting Lizzy's awe-struck one. "Now you see why we locked you away like this? We can't let you get so confused and filled with everyone else's memories and thoughts that you forget yourself in the maelstrom. And you have to learn to identify falsehoods in your perception."

"What do you mean?"

"As far as we have seen, your universal cognizance depends on data. If you get the wrong data, or if you have gaps, your ability fills in the blanks. I'm sure you filled in a few blanks in Nemitz's testimony. He glossed over the abuse, even though his personality profile distinctly pegs him as the kind of guy who would go beating on you. He also glossed over hauling you to the air lock. I'm sure you saw all of that, though, even if it wasn't there."

"I read between the lines."

"Yeah," Matthew sighed. He then looked at the clock. "I was planning on coming by your cell to apologize, and tell you that our rendezvous with Teresa was no more than a few hours off. Let's get you back to your room where you can rest."

Lizzy nodded and stood, watching as Matthew moved. She still felt that desperate longing in her, though. As she followed him to her room, they stopped outside the doorway. He turned to her, and all she could do was reach out to try to touch his cheek.

Matthew reached up, gripping her hand firmly, but gently. "Don't, please. If you care about me as much as you say, you won't torment me like that."

"I'm sorry, Matthew," Lizzy said, biting her lip. She moved inside her room and heard the door close and latch behind her.

Elizabeth didn't go to bed. Instead, she went back to the computer, and pulled up the logs that led up to Nemitz's testimony. She found several about their search for Nemitz's ship, about the surprise attack that led to Elizabeth's capture, but she wasn't interested in those things. In spite of her better judgment, the impulse to know what she and Matthew had was too strong to resist. She pulled up a file about the research they were conducting on her, trying to figure her out. Lizzy began to read.

Lizzy looked down at her feet. They were heavily booted. She wore dingy-looking slacks and a wrinkled button-down that hung open to reveal a yellowed white t-shirt. She turned to look at a mirror to confirm what she suspected. It was true. She was in Matthew's body.

Then, by no will of her own, Matthew moved forward, turning a corner in some brightly lit corridor that reminded her of a hospital. The doorway to a room opened, and there Lizzy was, laying on a table, unconscious and thrashing in her sleep. Sweat was pouring down her body, soaking the cushion on which she lay. There was a helmet on her head that had thousands of nodes connected to thousands of wires routed into a computer.

Teresa was there, standing over Lizzy with a worry-worn face. She carefully sponged the sweat from Lizzy's brow. Then she turned her gaze on Matthew. The tightening in Matthew's chest was automatic, and was soon followed by a tinge of guilt. He loved Lizzy, there was no doubt, but Teresa's exotic, harsh beauty was undeniable. He shook off the way she looked at him and went to his little Liz's side, taking her hand in his own.

"What's her status?"

"Same as before. These dreams are doing hell on her body."

"Is it deadly?"

"No, the damage is fixed easily enough. I don't think she's in serious danger. A mortal human, on the other hand... they'd be dead in a week."

"The blessings of being an Eternal, I guess," Matthew said with a harsh bitterness that Elizabeth could feel as if it were her own.

"You still hate yourself for that?"

"You would too, if you were already pushing two centuries of life and had outlived most of your family and friends."

"Not my fault that medical technology went so far into the stellar reaches of capability, nor is it my fault you kept allowing them to keep you alive all that time."

"No, it's not," Matthew sighed, "Just very rotten timing. When I finally make my peace with the thought of meeting my maker is when the Red Plague hits."

Teresa placed a hand on Matthew's in a sympathetic gesture. That same flip of the heart hits him, and Matthew silently curses this betrayal to the deep well of feeling he has for his Liz.

"She seems to be coming down," Matthew said, looking up at the neural scans to distract from this moment.

"Yeah, she should be out of it soon."

Only a few minutes later, Lizzy did come out of it, and started babbling.

"Paolish killing Wurns," Lizzy gasped, her hair hanging back from moisture as she tried to sit up. "Wurns will perish. They will all die in the firefight. We must defend them..."

Suddenly, the entire dream went black for a brief moment as Elizabeth's own consciousness separated from that of Matthew's and went to her own in the dream. For a brief moment, she was Matthew, and she was herself, and she saw herself in his eyes and him in her own in a dizzying state of paradoxical existence. Then it started to melt. The face that came through it was horrible. Dark hollow eyes stared back at her.

"You will not be allowed to see," said the voice. It was cold and calculating, void of emotion. And yet it carried the bare, naked truth with it: death. This creature was coming for her.

Persephone had just taken Teresa's shuttle into the cargo bay, mounting it into the brackets that hung from the ceiling, putting it firmly in place. Matthew waited patiently along one of the huge arcs of steel that ran around the edge of the cargo bay, watching as a gangway extended from Teresa's shuttle to where he stood.

Then out stepped the still young- and fierce-looking Teresa, standing tall alongside an assistant that looked to be a timber wolf breed. The male was thin, but fit and harsh-looking.

"Hello, Matthew," Teresa said, smiling slightly as she sauntered her way towards him. That little smirk, the forward and unabashed gaze she had, and that casual walk all spoke to Matthew's more carnal desires, and he gritted his teeth against it.

"Hello Teresa," he said stiffly, extending an arm for a formal handshake before she could go in and try to kiss him on the cheek, as was her custom. Teresa simply took his hand and gripped firmly.

"Still afraid of betraying your feelings for Lizzy, I see."

"Who is this?" Matthew said, ignoring her.

"This is Yardley, my assistant," she said with a slight smirk. The wolf stepped forward and shook hands with Matthew. "He's of the timber wolf clans on Gelkin. He has proven to be my brightest pupil."

"It's a pleasure, Yardley," Matthew said formally. The wolf simply nodded in assent. There was a predatory look about him, with those wolf eyes of his and the way his ears stood on end. Matthew passed it off, thinking it was simply part of his breed.

"Come on, let's head up to the bridge. I'm on watch," Matthew said, leading the other two away.

Stepping onto the bridge, Yardley closed the door behind the three of them, latching it firmly as Matthew resumed his position in his chair.

"How is she doing?" Teresa asked, satisfied they would not be disturbed.

"She's awake. Her cognition dreams have started in full force."

"I thought you put her in containment."

"I did, but you should remember that she is cleverer than we can typically estimate," Matthew said, turning to give Teresa a sharp glance.

"What was her first full cognition?"

"The day she was jettisoned into space. She had it just six hours ago."

"At least we got to her early."

Just then, there was a slamming on the doorway behind Yardley. Before the wolf could react, the latch snapped under the pressure, and the door swung open. Lizzy was in the doorway, and was dashing across the bridge to where Matthew sat.

"Liz, what the--"

At this point, many things happened at once. Alarms all over the ship began going off. Two singularities were forming ahead of Persephone, one slightly to port and one slightly to starboard. Lizzy had pushed Matthew from his seat before he could get another word out, and began the spooling process for warp drive. As she did so, the remaining alarms on the ship all began going off. The artificial gravity well for ftl speed, combined with the power of the two singularities that had just formed, were all converging. The resulting distortion in space-time was unlike anything the sensors had picked up before--and it was right in front of them. The tachyon field formed up just in time for the Persephone as they were launched forward from the sheer force of it all.

Persephone hurled itself towards the converging singularities, forced ever-closer to either side of the ship as they were shot through it like a slingshot, the combined force of all three artificial singularities hurling the cargo ship to velocities never achieved before. Outside of their protective tachyon bubble, the two emerging alien ships were decimated in milliseconds, their debris swept up in the wake of the Persephone along with Teresa's military vessel. The crew of the Triton hardly knew what was happening before it was all over for them, and millions of light years of debris from the ship were created in Persephone's wake.

STOP! was the only thing that could be heard in Elizabeth's head. It was like this booming, painful voice inside every fiber of her being. She lay curled on the floor of the bridge, shaking violently, her hands on the sides of her head, hearing it louder and louder.

STOP!!!!

Lizzy screamed.

Matthew climbed back to his chair, the whole ship shaking violently as the tachyon field struggled to maintain its structure. Instead of brilliant passing bands of color, it was just solid white. The bombardment being felt against the tachyon field was immense. Checking the instruments, Matthew struggled to concentrate amidst Lizzy's screaming. All the navigational equipment and sensors were disabled, overloaded with information. The only controls that seemed to still be working were the warp drive and tachyon generator, and those just barely. All the power the ship had was being poured into those systems to desperately maintain physical integrity.

STOP!!!!!!

Lizzy's fingers dug into the sides of her head now, scratching through her scalp and making her hair bloody.

STOP!!!!!!

Teresa went up alongside Matthew, both their hands flying over the controls now, trying to route and reroute power to keep themselves in one piece. Both of their arms danced over and under each other, doing what they could.

"We can't dance like this forever!" Teresa yelled over the roar reverberating through the ship.

"I can't stop it!" Matthew snapped back.

"Reverse the gravitational differential!"

"There isn't one! The warp drive isn't registering a thing!"

"That's impossible. How are we maintaining velocity?"

"I don't know," Matthew growled, punching controls viciously.

"What if we turned around?"

"Are you insane?"

"Well you said the ship isn't being pulled by anything. If we turned around and activated the warp drive--"

"We could be torn apart!"

"Or it'll act as a breaking system."

Matthew thought about it. Either way, their tachyon field wasn't going to last forever. He put his hands over the controls for the maneuvering thrusters and turned the ship around inside their tachyon bubble. He put minimal power to the warp drive, the ship shuddering dangerously as some power was drawn from the tachyon generator. Miraculously, they seemed to be slowing. It was still too great of a velocity for their sensors to recalibrate themselves, but at the very least they could feel the ship's gravity generators adjusting to the lower velocity.

STOP!!!!

Lizzy still kept screaming. Her fingers were bloody now, but Matthew wouldn't let himself tend to her until they had their ship under control. The tachyon field slowly began returning to normal, even though the bands were now moving in the wrong direction. Matthew kept slowing them down more and more until, finally, they were at a dead stop.

The instrumentation came back to life, scanners checked their exterior environment, and once Matthew was satisfied they were in a safe place, he disengaged their protective bubble, revealing their position on the outer boundaries of a dual red giant system. Lizzy stopped screaming, and lay passed out on the floor. The wolf, Yardley, was nowhere to be found. Matthew took a deep breath and fell back into his chair, letting the adrenaline drain from his body.

"What the hell was that?" Teresa demanded.

"I have no idea," Matthew said, gazing out into the space that was behind them. He sat up again, and began scanning their route. "Jesus," he whispered.

"What?"

"There's debris in our wake. A lot of it."

"Composition?"

"Much of it unknown. Some of it, though..." Matthew began, and then his shoulders drooped, "matches the composition of a standard military vessel. It seems your ship was dragged into the anomaly behind us."

Teresa banged the console angrily. "Damnit! What the fuck did you do to her!?"

"Me!?" Matthew snapped, standing and whipping around to face her. "It's not my fault you people pressed for constant testing on Lizzy's abilities! Had you not pushed her, she might never have--"

"Matthew?" came a low, weak whisper. Matthew turned, seeing Liz laying there on the floor beside him, staring at her own bloody hands. The sides of her head were scratched up. "Why am I covered in blood? Where am I, Matthew?"

"Liz, baby? Is that you?" he whispered, kneeling beside her.

"Yeah," Elizabeth said, smiling up at Matthew. It was her smile, that wan little thing that lit up her face like a bright sunrise. "Who else would it be?"

Matthew pulled Lizzy into his arms, kissing her forehead. "My little Lizard."

"I hate that name," she said tiredly, resting her head on his shoulder. She let her arms hang limply from his shoulders, intertwined under his own arms.

"But it's so cute," he said with a soft chuckle.

Lizzy stuck out her tongue at him. Matthew pressed her close to his chest. "Glad to have you back, baby," he said, tears streaming down his face.

"I didn't know I went anywhere."

Andromeda Rising V

"I don't know how the hell this happened," Teresa said in frustration, staring at the brain scan. The activity in Lizzy's mind seemed to have been completely erased. The only patches where any recent activity was registered was in the memory center of the brain, where a thick clustering of activity seemed to have lit up the area in vivid color.

Matthew sat with Lizzy in his lap, her head on his shoulder. She was sleeping peacefully for once. He reveled in silence as he felt the softness of her breath against his neck. The wolf known as Yardley was standing beside her. Apparently, the wolf had rushed to the aid of Byirnah in the reactor room. If it weren't for their combined efforts, the ship would have torn itself apart halfway across to wherever it was they were. The crew owed their lives to Yardley and Byirnah, which put Yardley in good standing in Matthew's book.

"Well, sorry you lost your cog," Matthew said with an almost teasing kind of tone, standing up with Elizabeth cradled in his arms. "I'm going to get some rest while you try to figure it out."

"You're loving this way too much," Teresa said.

"You listen here," Matthew said. His voice was harsh, admonishing. Teresa turned, her face bewildered, having not heard this kind of tone from Matthew in a long time. "I lost her way before Nemitz. I lost her when you and your precious Council stole her from me for experimentations. She had destroyed herself years before that day she was stolen from your clutches, and I'll say it now and always from now: I'm fucking glad you lost your super-weapon. She was my wife, first and foremost, and now I actually have a chance to live my life with her as I should have."

"Not for long. With those aliens decimating the galaxy, none of us will have anything left."

"Perhaps we don't deserve it."

With that, Matthew marched out of the room and up to his quarters. Teresa simply stood there, gripping the examination table until her fingers tore through the mattress.

"Mistress?" Yardley said. His voice was diminutive, submissive. It was an odd juxtaposition compared to his hard stance and clipped manner in the presence of others.

"I told you not to call me that outside my quarters," she snapped. The wolf shied away.

In his quarters, Matthew lay Liz down on his bed. She stirred slightly. "Hey sweetie."

"Hey, Lizard."

Elizabeth giggled. It was such a refreshing sound. She pulled him into bed with her, kissing him deeply before pulling back. "What were you arguing about with Teresa?"

"Nothing, baby."

"She seems to like you... a lot..."

"Yeah, but you're the only girl for me."

"Good," Lizzy said, giggling again and wrapping her arms around Matthew. "Now kiss me."

But that kiss never came. Instead, they were interrupted by a loud knock at the door located at the fore of the room, the one that led directly to the bridge. "Crap," Matthew grunted, climbing from his bed. "I don't think I'm ever going to rest."

Opening the door, Matthew saw the worried face on Y'thrix's face.

"This better be good."

"No, sir," Y'thrix squeaked. He pushed the heavy-looking glasses up on his small nose. "It's very, very bad."

"How the hell is this possible?" Teresa said as she crowded over Matthew's shoulder. They were looking at a readout on their location.

"Just a constant for the quality input, aren't we, Teresa," Matthew mumbled giving her a dark look that pushed her to back away from his personal space. He never did like it when people hovered so close to his ear. "Y'thrix, you've had Byirnah independently confirm your numbers?"

"Yes, sir. We've even used charts to locate visible deep space quasars. The estimated mass of the galaxy, the general density, the positioning of key landmarks, it's all there. We're in the Andromeda Galaxy."

"Must've made one hell of a trip," Tak said, munching on some nondescript meal bar as his free hand swept over the controls. "By the way, cap, propulsion is still fried, and we're going to have to do a full check on our warp and tachyon systems before trying to get up to warp speed again."

"What about our trajectory? Are we safely in orbit around those suns?"

"For the moment. We should be fine in that department. There's something else, though."

"What?"

"Perhaps I should speak on this one," Y'thrix said. "There are tachyon signals being transmitted all over Andromeda."

"So there's intelligent life in this galaxy?"

"Sir... the language being transmitted is Aramaic."

Elizabeth was walking through a garden that had been left largely untended since the Red Plague had hit. The silence of the empty planet the disease had left behind filled her head, and she had to admit, it was rather enjoyable. Years and years in the shadows of the superscrapers of Manhattan and the horrendous amount of hustle and noise amongst the many pedestrian and transit levels of the city had filled her head with more noise than she knew what to do with. This silence was more than welcome. Off in the distance was the only sound breaking the silence: birds calling. But that was alright. That's what made this post-apocalyptic world worth surviving in.

Elizabeth knew what this was. It was her favorite dream. She didn't think about it too much, however. Every time she did, she woke up before the best part. She went along as she always did, then, strolling to the little corner that she had kept tended even as the rest of the large garden went wild.

Then, as scheduled, Elizabeth tripped on a rock and cried out, holding her hands to her right knee. And by the magic that was a dream, Matthew was right there with her. In actuality, it was more like five long minutes before he came rushing up, giving her knee plenty of time to heal up. He knelt beside her, looking worried and concerned. And that was the first time she really fell in love with the man. No longer did he look old enough to be her great grandfather, grandfather, or even her father. Only a few weeks ago the nanites had fully transformed him back into the handsome young man she saw now. In spite of the unsettling red eyes and hair, as well as those fangs, he was downright gorgeous. The concern in his face, though, is what made it for her.

Reassuring Matthew she was ok, Elizabeth invited him to sit beside her for a rest. She bent her somewhat bloody knee tentatively. The pain was still there, Elizabeth marveled. Even after all these centuries, she could still feel that scrape from so long ago.

Their conversation was going well, and they moved closer to each other. Elizabeth could not recall all that was said, but that wasn't important. Finally, she put her hand on his and squeezed it. He leaned in and kissed her deeply. Elizabeth's lips tingled.

"Make love to me," she heard herself say to Matthew. He obliged happily.

Elizabeth saw Matthew moving up and down in her vision, feeling him swell inside of her, feeling the blissful sensation that was their first time together, when suddenly it all changed.

Skies turned black, and the wild plants all around them wilted and died within a matter of seconds. When Elizabeth looked back to Matthew, he was still there, but his eyes... those eyes. These dark, gaping orbs stared back at her, cold and emotionless. And then he came, and filled her with that dead chill. Elizabeth screamed.

"Hey! Easy there, baby," Matthew said, holding her back by her shoulders. Lizzy looked around, hair disheveled, eyes bewildered.

"Matthew?" she said meekly, looking at his eyes. They were those familiar red orbs.

"It's me. You were just having a nightmare, Liz."

Elizabeth threw herself against him, hugging Matthew tightly. "Oh god, it was terrible, Matthew."

"It's ok," he reassured, rubbing her back. "You're ok now."

"I was dreaming of our first time... you remember it?"

"How could I forget it? The garden, the birds, the wild plants all around us."

"Yeah..." Elizabeth said, smiling weakly. "But then you changed... your eyes... they went large and black. And it was so cold. The worst part is... it seemed so familiar. I don't know why."

"Well it's ok now, baby. You're safe with me now--the real me."

Elizabeth buried her face into his chest, hugging Matthew tightly.

"You know, that's the same day you got your little pet name. You remember the lizard?"

Elizabeth nodded, looking up at Matthew with tear-streaked eyes. "It crawled right up on my belly when we were enjoying our afterglow," she said with a bright laugh. "But that doesn't mean you get to keep calling me that."

"And it doesn't mean I'm going to stop."

Elizabeth laughed again, then kissed Matthew deeply. After breaking the kiss, she sat up in the bed they were now sharing. "So where are we?"

"A long way away from The Milky Way and the Council."

"That's a good thing, right?"

"If you don't mind drifting around a planet-less star system for a long time."

"Are we that bad off?"

"No, we're trying to make contact with the intelligent race in this galaxy. After that... it's anyone's guess."

"Well... whatever happens, I'm glad it's happening with us together again."

"Me, too, baby," Matthew smiled and wrapped his arms around Elizabeth, and the pair of them lay together in bed for a repeat performance of their first time. This time, there were no haunting black eyes to worry about.

Oriel timidly stepped his way into the main hall of Queen Chloe's immense palace. He had been roused from bed, thrown into a transport, then taken to a starship that folded space directly to Azophi, the central planet of the systems under Chloe's control. He was still wearing a simple black silk robe tied at the waist, a pair of long boxer-like underwear hidden underneath. Nobody would say a word to him the entire trip over. The short, pudgy man had no concept of what was going on. His hair was raven black and combed back behind his ears to the best of his ability, given the circumstances. His flabby face had a bulbous, unsightly nose sticking out from it, and his body was round and soft from millennia of easy living. His eyes were the only thing that distinguished him as what he was. The fiery red orbs darted around as he tried to study every corner of the opulent hall. There seemed to be nobody there. The walls were solid white with gold accents, as were the pillars, and even the throne. It was almost a blinding kind of white. Queen Chloe was notorious for her obsession for representing purity.

Marching forward, Oriel felt like his march towards the empty throne was taking forever. It seemed like an eternity had passed before he finally came within twenty paces of the throne and stopped as if by an invisible force. He, like all others that were even allowed to step foot in this place, was very well trained.

Oriel stood and waited, trying not to fidget too much. It was getting harder, though, as the temperature in this white-walled hall was always so cold, and he was so inadequately dressed. When her voice did come to his ears, however, he wished suddenly he hadn't been so impatient for her to arrive.

"You've failed me, Oriel," came the Queen's voice. It was soft, hurt, and yet Oriel knew the sick and sadistic undercurrents in that tone.

"I'm sorry, my Queen," he humbly said, bowing his head even though there was nobody to bow to.

"Are you? Your lackadaisical nature has proven your undoing, and I seriously doubt you know of what I speak."

"I beg your pardon, my Queen. I do not."

"At least you are straightforward with me," the queen replied. Just then, Oriel could hear her mechanical steps. She was above him, but he dared not look for fear of showing his disrespect. There was the sound of her several spider-like legs moving over the ceiling. Then the sound came down the wall behind the throne, and then before Oriel. "Lift your head, servant."

Oriel obeyed. What he saw was no surprise, but was still terrifying to behold. Queen Chloe looked to be no more than ten years old at most, an eons-old woman trapped inside a preteen body. From her back, it looked like eight legs were extending from her spine. Slowly, the silvery extensions lowered her on to her feet and retracted. They were smooth and featureless, showing no joints at their bending points. Oriel silently wondered just how much of Chloe was still human, and how much was composed simply of nanites. He thought perhaps all that was left of Queen Chloe as she was in the beginning was her skin, but you wouldn't be able to see it. Her hair dangled down in tight little golden curls. Her eyes were a brilliant blue--artificial, of course. Her thin frame was clothed in a simple sundress that was yellow with white polka-dots. Horrendously cute for such an evil little bitch. She grinned at him, but there was no humor in the smile. Chloe was one of the few Eternals that preferred to keep her fangs completely intact.

"You remember the cleansing I ordered you to undertake?"

"Of the Milky Way, my Queen?"

"No, the downstairs laundry," Chloe said, anger flashing in her face. "Of course I mean the fucking Milky Way!!!"

Oriel flinched. "Apologies, my Queen."

"You remember my specific instructions?"

"Leave no human alive."

"Leave no human alive..." Chloe mused, marching around him slowly, her sandals squeaking loudly on the white tile floor. "So then explain to me exactly why a ship FROM THE FUCKING MILKY WAY JUST ARRIVED IN ANDROMEDA!?" As Chloe went into her screaming tirade, she grabbed Oriel by the fleshy part of his throat and held him up in front of her, his legs dragging behind him, not giving any resistance. A screen seemed to pop up out of nowhere, floating right in front of his eyes. It showed a battered old junker of a ship. It had a straight fuselage with what looked to be an ancient warp drive system on the back end and a huge bulge of a cargo hold underneath.

"Your majesty, I swear I didn't leave any chance for--"

"Shut the hell up!" She shrieked. "We've already had them send out distress calls. There are at least two of our kind on that ship if not more, and some sort of hybrid filth helping them out. You didn't even bother to wait behind to make sure the virus annihilated the humans, did you!?"

"My Queen, all tests showed the virus we created from the beneficial strain was one-hundred per cent--"

"And I said that you better make goddamn sure that there won't be any interfering variances amongst the humans of the Andromeda galaxy, didn't I!?"

"Yes, your majesty."

"You're going to pay for this, Oriel. You're going to wish you were dead long before I grant such a pleasure," Chloe hissed, then began dragging him by the neck towards her chambers. Nobody ever came back from there. Ever.

I believe you, he thought to himself. Oriel was already working on methods to get himself killed more quickly, but his racing mind was too overwhelmed to even consider it. They entered a small doorway to one side of the throne. It closed automatically behind him with a loud thud, and Oriel found himself in total darkness and the rotten stench of decaying flesh.

Andromeda Rising VI

-Credit for the song sung in this chapter goes to Vienna Teng, "Lullaby for a Stormy Night."

Matthew leaned back in his chair, bringing his fingers to pinch at the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. His head was pounding. He was starving already. It had only been two days, but they had been a long two days. He was pounding through line after line of ancient Aramaic, trying to get himself to communicable levels of skill. It was a far faster of a process than it was when he was but a mortal human, but he felt his fluency may be pivotal in this galaxy.

Elizabeth was, as always, already gaining a fluency for the language that Matthew and Teresa would never quite be able to match. She was surfing through transmissions being broadcast across Andromeda. While she was listening intently to the different variations and dialects, Matthew couldn't help but notice just how many of them were obviously Eternals. Many of them had alterations done to their hair to hide the brilliant red locks, and several seemed to keep their fangs filed down, but they seemed to keep the red eyes as what could only be described as a mark of distinction. Much of what was being communicated was general nonsense, so far as Matthew could understand--things of no real importance. And the communications went on and on without there being so much as a sign that anyone was paying any attention to Persephone or her distress calls.

On the bridge, Byirnah, Tak, Y'thrix and Yardley were rotating shifts, watching and listening for any signs of rescue. The propulsion system was fixed but for some key components that had gotten fried in the assault their trans-galaxy trip had committed on them, and Byirnah was not exactly capable of performing miracles. For the time being, they were stuck in their orbit around the twin suns.

Elizabeth stood up, leaning back and stretching until a series of loud pops came from her spine. Matthew took no mind, Teresa seemed to cringe. "I'm getting sleepy," Elizabeth said, yawning wide as if to prove her point. "Can't I go get some rest?"

"Yeah, baby," Matthew said, giving a tired little smile of his own. "Of the three of us, you've got the least to worry about when it comes to lost ground here. Hell, by the end of the week I'm sure you could teach quantum mechanics in Aramaic without a problem."

Elizabeth simply giggled and kissed Matthew's forehead. "Well, I do seem to have a knack for it. It reminds me so much of when we taught ourselves German that first winter after the plague."

"Why would you need that dead language?" Teresa asked. She seemed particularly irritated. Part of it had to do with the fact Lizzy was showing no signs of regaining her abilities, the rest was mostly due to the fact that, when it came to languages, she was on the back end of the curve. She made up for it, though, in her sheer genius in the medical field.

"Es ist eine schöne Sprache," Elizabeth replied.

"What?" Teresa demanded.

"She said it is a beautiful language. Stimmen Sie zu?"

"<She doesn't know the usefulness of having a code language?>" Elizabeth asked Matthew. This time it was in Gaelic, however. She did not want to risk Teresa knowing any of the words she was using while talking about her, and Gaelic was pretty much dead but for what she and Matthew knew.

"<I think that she gets frustrated too easily with languages, so she only bothers learning the ones necessary for communicating. You should hear her try to speak any of the tongues of the confederated planets. You would die laughing.>"

"Okay, I get your point about secrecy," Teresa said, interjecting. "You don't have to keep speaking German."

The couple looked at each other with a smirk, realizing that switching to an even more obscure language was completely unnecessary. Matthew thought it remarkable that Teresa could not hear the very obvious shift in tonal quality when they started speaking Gaelic. He refused to make mention of it, however, she might get suspicious that way. Teresa was always suspicious, perhaps because she never did all that well with interpersonal skills, and she knew it. "Alright, alright. Anyhow, goodnight Liz."

Elizabeth smiled and kissed Matthew briefly. "I'll make sure to check on Tak and see if there're any updates before I hit the sack." And with that, Elizabeth disappeared through the door.

Matthew turned towards Teresa. She had those eyes that he was so familiar with. It was the kind of look she got when she hungered for some sort of new scientific revelation. It was this predatory, hungry thing that spoke of a lust for power rather than knowledge. It was probably the one saving grace that kept Matthew at enough distance to not be too tempted by Teresa's offers and advances of intimacy.

"She's going to hurt us, you know," Teresa said, turning towards Matthew.

"What do you mean?" he said, now with irritation in his own voice. He turned his gaze down to the several data screens cast across the table top, deciphering the written Aramaic there.

"Once her abilities return. She'll be hunted. We all will."

"I have no intention of anyone else knowing what she's capable of."

"People have a way of finding out. And we're in a whole new ball game in this galaxy."

"I don't have any intention of remaining here for long."

"And what's your plan for travelling over two million light years without anywhere to stop?"

"It's doable."

"You can't run your warp drive full-board for over two and a half years, Matthew. We'd be dead in the water less than a third of the way home."

"We'll see..." Matthew replied, drifting off as he went back to work on his Aramaic. In the back of his head, he was already trying to figure out a plan.

Queen Chloe was idly licking blood from her fingers as she watched the video of the so-called Captain Matthew trying to transmit a distress call in his broken Aramaic. She thought it so wonderfully delicious; letting them wait out in the middle of nowhere, just hovering around those two red giants.

Behind her, hanging by his wrists, was Oriel. Everything from the waist down was gone. Only a few desperately clinging tendrils of his flesh remained hanging from his torso where his hip bones should have started. Blood stained the wall behind him and below. His entrails had been whipped around the room, leaving brownish red streaks everywhere. The remnants of others were also splattered on the walls, making for a horribly gruesome lair for the young-looking queen. The worst part of it, however, was Oriel remained breathing. His eyes were the kind of dead, glazed eyes one would expect of a man who has felt more pain than was imaginable for a person. They were the eyes of one who just could not react to the pain anymore; it was so intense and mind-numbing. Sometimes, being an Eternal meant more pain that it was worth. Oriel knew he should be dead by now, but those damned bionic machines inside of him stemmed the blood flows with expert care, using what resources they could to keep his heart beating and his lungs working. They knew not of his pain, only their own survival. A dead host meant dead nanites.

Then, a voice came to Oriel. You want to die?

Oriel didn't even respond. For him, it was another hallucination. Another voice that wasn't there.

I asked you a question.

Oriel's eyes shifted up at to the left, then to the right. He was trying to see where the voice was coming from.

You cannot see me. Don't waste the energy on trying.

Who are you? Oriel thought, but could not say.

A Watcher.

There is no such thing, Oriel said. It was almost an instinctive reaction. Watchers were myth. They were not the all-powerful, all-knowing evolved creatures everyone believed them to be, permeating all that went on in the universe. They were delusions of desperate people meeting desperate times.

You deny me? I am here, talking to you, in a place no living thing escapes from.

You are a delusion based on my dreams to have this pain end.

If I am a delusion, would you still listen to me if it meant you could do just that?

I'm listening.

While this went on, Chloe simply replayed Matthew's message over and over again. She considered, perhaps, telling him her true identity, and when. Perhaps just as she was about to disembowel him, she could tell him. Or perhaps she would tell him sooner. Let him weigh in on the fact this was what his own granddaughter had become. She tittered with laughter at this idea.

"I don't know how you got this far, grandfather, but you'll pay for treading in my galaxy."

"Your tyranny is at an end, highness."

Chloe whipped around on her spider-like appendages. "What was that, slave?"

"You will burn like all the others. Repent, little Melissa. Purge yourself of your sins."

Chloe charged forward in a blur of metallic legs, and had her hand at Oriel's throat. She didn't even have time to register Oriel was speaking in English, a language she thought dead in her little corner of the universe. "How do you know that name?"

Instead of answering, Oriel began to sing softly.

"Little child, be not afraid.

The rain pounds harsh against the glass

like an unwanted stranger.

There is no danger.

I am here to--"

Oriel's words were stopped suddenly as one of Chloe's spider legs thrust from underneath, ripping apart his entire spinal column and decimating the motor function area of his brain. The damage was too devastating for his nanites to compensate, and so all faded to black for Oriel. The last thing he managed to do was think out to the voice that had helped him. Thank you, Watcher. I can sleep...

You are welcome, Oriel. You were so brave.

Chloe tightened the grip on Oriel's neck, ripping his body away from the wall with such strength that his hands crushed themselves through the metal rings that had held them fast. She then threw his corpse clear across the room where it slammed into a pile of several other unfortunate souls. It was then she began screaming in rage.

Matthew burst into the bridge as quickly as he could when the call came. It was four days into their constant distress calls. He'd learned Aramaic fluently enough to feel confident he could communicate with others in the galaxy. Elizabeth had stopped studying only the day before, satisfied with her own capacity.

"About time," Tak said, turning in his chair towards Matthew. "We just got a call from a ship. Looks military to me. They're awaiting your reply."

Matthew gave a slight nod. Even as he stepped forward to stand in front of his own control console, the others came filing in after him. By the time Tak had re-opened the connection, there was a hodgepodge of creatures standing behind Matthew.

The image that came up was odd. Matthew and his entire crew had looks of puzzlement when they beheld the female in front of them. She was stunningly beautiful in a classical kind of way. She had soft cheeks and a curvy body, and thick golden locks spread out around her head. But her eyes were closed, and her body lay limp in what looked like a throne. There were a multitude of connections going in and out of the chair, which was solid white along with the cables that connected it. The female, too, was clad nearly entirely in white but for a red mark that circled her neck at the top hem of her button-down shirt. Even the background of the room in which she sat was almost purely white. The look of it was so sterile and so blinding.

Matthew blinked a few times to get his eyes adjusted to the screen, waiting for the female to do or say something.

Just as he opened his mouth to try to say hello, a voice filled the bridge. "State your purpose here." The voice was a mixture of the robotic and the feminine. It was beautiful and yet fell flat on the ears. But, more importantly, the voice was speaking English. Matthew decided he would worry how they knew the language later.

"We're travelers from the Milky Way. We hit an anomaly that launched us across to this galaxy."

"Can you prove this?" The voice was so cold and straightforward, yet Matthew still could not help but detect some sort of human element in it.

"Just look at the debris field trailing us. You'll find the remains of three other ships that got pulled in our wake."

"You are destroyers?"

"No. Like I said, it was an anomaly that tore everything apart behind us," Matthew said, speaking carefully.

"What type of anomaly was this?"

"Honestly, if I could tell you, I would," Matthew sighed. "Look, all we want is to get home safe. Could you lend us a hand here?"

For a long while, there was nothing said. Then all the sensors began going off, indicating a ship beside them. Matthew looked at his readout. The thing was at least twenty times the size of his own ship. It was spherical in shape, with a depression in the front with a strip of windows stretching across the diameter. He figured that was what could be considered the "bow" of the vessel. It was also pure white on the outside. "You will be towed in and transported directly to Azophi. The Queen awaits your arrival. Please remain aboard your ship while in transit."

"Wait," Matthew said, holding up a hand just as the screen faded out, leaving only the image of space ahead of them and the large white ship to one side. Still, the same voice answered.

"What?"

"How long have you been maintaining a course alongside our ship?"

Another pause. "Since one-point-five of your hours after your arrival in Andromeda Galaxy."

Bella was strolling along her stone-cobbled path back home, which was a low wooden structure with a beautiful red door in the front. The wooden panels had no paint of their own, and a thin trail of smoke was drifting into the air above her head. The breeze picked up, and the smell of wet dirt wafted across her nose. Rain was coming. Rain was always on its way when it looked like change was near. She sighed, but there was still a warm smile on her face as she opened the doorway into her home.

Setting down a basket full of vegetables from her garden, Bella wiped her dirty hands on a white apron that hung in front of her blue cotton dress. She turned to Nancy, who had been preparing their lunch for the previous half hour or so, and placed her arms around her, kissing her tenderly. Nancy was tall and looked almost Nordic, if it weren't for the dark black hair and brown eyes. Her features were a little more angular, her build a little larger than most women, but Bella thought her gorgeous. Bella looked as she always has, with her thick golden locks of hair, slightly rounded face, and sapphire blue eyes.

"Hey baby," Nancy said tenderly, moving her lips from Bella's lips to her forehead. "You were out in the garden quite a while."

"I had some thinking to do," Bella said, laying her head on Nancy's chest.

"This matter of Matthew troubling you?"

"Yes... and my mother doesn't seem very happy."

"When is she ever?"

"I hope she doesn't hurt him. He seems to be a good man. Unlike most of those like him."

"You act as if you're not one, yourself."

"What I am has changed so much, I'm not certain of what I am anymore."

"I know you're the love of my life," Nancy said affectionately, smiling and kissing Bella's forehead.

Bella simply lifted her head slightly and nosed Nancy's neck affectionately. "Any more word from that Watcher?"

"He hasn't come back yet, no."

"If what he promises is true... would we go?" Bella asked, lifting her head again to gaze into Nancy's eyes. Nancy smiled down at her, caressing her cheek.

"I'll go if you do."

"You know I want to."

For a moment, their reality vanished as the ship finalized the docking with Persephone. A couple thoughts from Bella in tandem with Nancy, and they were underway to Azophi, and back in their little wooden cottage. "We will finally be able to just be together," Bella said, kissing Nancy's cheek.

"And if what the Watcher says is true, this digital fantasy can be a reality."

"Let us pray that is true."

Andromeda Rising VII

It was the party nobody wanted to be in attendance for. But such was the price of being one of the most powerful people of the Andromeda Galaxy. There was idle chatter here and there, colorful costumes of all kinds. There was even light and airy music playing for all to hear. The chatter was pleasant, the food and wine flowed copiously, and everyone was smiling. But there was a tension cutting through it all. Nervous glances always shot towards where the throne and its owner sat. People constantly looking to time pieces they had tucked away, trying to gauge what would be an appropriate amount of time, considering their rank and position beneath the queen, before they should approach the throne and make for pleasant conversation with her--and how long they would have to make pleasantries by measuring the time others were up there. Outside the setting of Chloe's palace, this act was discussed with great amounts of care, and was known commonly as "dancing over the spider's web." If you stepped wrong, setting the web twitching, the spider would get you.

Nobody knew why they were "invited" to Queen Chloe's palace. All they knew was that the Queen was throwing a big party, and an invitation meant they didn't have much of a choice. Barring the most extreme of circumstances, one never ignored the Queen's invitation. There was even one particular prince who'd launched himself into the frozen depths of space, for fear that the Queen would find out that he'd been laying with one of the low creatures--a subset of humans bred with a particular primate-like creature found in Andromeda to create loyal, unwavering servants. Copulating with one meant tainting the purity of the race, and was punishable by death; or worse. That particular prince had had his legs lowered into a medium-grade hydrochloric acid on a public display. He didn't stop screaming until days later.

It wasn't until the opulent, gold-trimmed ivory doors were thrown open that the party dared stop. Every face turned, eyes staring in fear. Nobody just threw open the doors like that. The Queen demanded announcement. Chloe was very much a glutton for pomp and circumstance. When people realized it was Bella, the tension softened--slightly. She oftentimes got away with certain indiscretions. Still, such a bold entrance made every court member present doubt the Queen's capacity for patience for Bella.

Boots clacked loudly against the hard tile floor. Bella's hair flowed out behind her, the brilliant golden locks standing out like bright sunshine against the all-gray tunic she now wore, flagrantly disregarding her own mother's policy on all military officers being in uniform--even if they be the highest ranking officer of the entire armed forces. Men stared with awe, women with jealous envy. Bella was only one of thousands of "daughters", but she was by far the most favored. Leader of the entirety of the Queens armada, given the most advanced ship in the fleet, and the only court member--or individual, for that matter--ever allowed to roam the entire galaxy as she pleased. No permits were necessary with Bella. No rules applied to her but the Queen's.

"You test me, Bella," the Queen said. While the words were threatening, the tone was not. It was very much the scene of a mother tut-tutting her own child in reprimand for a very forgivable offense. "I suppose you are so audacious only because you have brought me exactly what I asked for?"

Bella came to a stop five paces from the throne--again the only one capable of doing such a thing--and smirked to Chloe, her mother and Queen. "Of course. When else do I have the gall to barge in on your party like this?"

"When do you barge in at all? With you gallivanting across the galaxy as you do, I doubt there have been more than four times I've seen your face in the past hundred years."

"Five. The war with the Hycleans ended only ninety-nine years ago."

"Ah yes, so it did," the queen said with a sigh, sitting back in her chair. "That rogue Thomas. What a bother he was."

"I remember you liking him nearly as much as me."

"Well, there's only so far a mother's patience can be pushed, Bella. You always seem to so masterfully dance right on that line."

"That's why you love me most," Bella said, her tone seeming to be both to her mother and those around her, firmly pressing it in everyone's faces.

Chloe laughed loudly, her tittering voice resonating throughout the massive hall. "Oh Bella, it is so true!" After many minutes trying to restore her previous state of calm, the Queen finally managed some level of composure. "So where are they?"

"Aboard their ship, firmly in the hold of my own craft."

"You haven't had any trouble with them, have you?"

"Not a peep. They seem pretty docile, especially since the Shen has been repairing their ship for them."

"I don't know why you resort to classifying your ship under that nasty tongue," the queen sighed, more perturbed about the repairs being conducted on the ship.

"They won't be seeing their bird again, my queen," Bella said, knowing exactly what Chloe was getting irate about. "It was a measure to keep them calm and under the impression they were under our aid rather than our internment. The best way to cage an animal is to give it everything it thinks it wants. You taught me that.

Chloe was thusly swayed, letting a smirk find its way across her lips. "So I did. Bring them down. I want them to appear before my guests."

Bella gave a low bow to Chloe before turning away to do her bidding. She may feel the comfort of being able to be rash with her mother and queen, but she knew her bounds. On her way out, Nancy reached out to her once again, touching her consciousness.

I'm still here, Bella whispered to her reassuringly. She still does not suspect.

I am relieved. Still, I wish you were not so cavalier with her. Hearing Nancy's voice in her head made Bella want to swoon, and it was everything in her not to do just that as she walked out of the hall. The doors were shut firmly behind her by a pair of low creatures. Their flat, wide-eyed faces stared with a strange kind of dolefulness that had actually come to be known as the inherent dog-like adoration they had for their masters. Chloe stared after her daughter with narrowing eyes. As much as Bella might not believe it, she was still showing the hint of taint about her that was a loving relationship. Who it was, or what, for that matter, didn't matter. Chloe felt a small tinge of sadness as she passed judgment in the back of her head that her dearest daughter would have to die.

If I am not cavalier with her, then she will have more reason for suspicion. This is how I always am with her. To do anything else would be to risk it all.

What will she do with our guests?

She's going to kill them.

Matthew stirred from his doze as the front windows of the bridge suddenly disappeared behind a screen showing the same familiar seat where Bella was always sitting, eyes closed, lounged back, seemingly merged with the ship. Except this time, he found himself staring at an empty seat.

The voice that came over the communicator was also slightly different; like some quality that had once made it a whole voice was missing. "Prepare for disembarkation," was the only thing said, and the screen disappeared to show a diagram of Matthew's own ship, a red marker indicating the top hatch. Matthew guessed that would be their only allowable method of exit. As cryptic as this race was, he had to admit he was encouraged by the repairs done by the holding bay in which they were in. Still, he sensed the possibility of a trap.

Pressing a button, he relayed the announcement to the rest of the crew. Tak was already stirring behind him. It wasn't long before the entire crew was assembled in the mess, just beneath the upper hatch.

Matthew sighed, looking around to all the faces. Everyone had been so irritable during their stay together, the cramped space of the main fuselage of the ship forcing them together like refugees. Now, it seemed, nobody was ready to go leaping into this strange new environment. Matthew held his hand out to Liz. She stepped forward, a tired little smile on her face, and pressed her lips to his. Teresa stared on, a slight flash of anger in her eyes that only her faithful wolven servant observed. Yardley's back was still itching like hell from the lash marks. He had a feeling that look would mean more abuse in the near future.

"Shall we?" Matthew said in as cavalier of an attitude as he could, mounting the ladder that led to the upper hatch. He twisted the round handle firmly, and a soft hiss preceded the hatch slowly receding. Matthew did the same for the secondary hatch two feet above, which lifted outwards.

After the dinginess of the ship's mess, the bright white walls, floor, and ceiling of Bella's ship was blinding, shining down at the crew members like a piercing ray of sunshine. They slowly followed Matthew into the corridor that, for some reason or another, their ship was docked directly underneath. On three sides were doorways firmly shut, showing the only change in features in the entire corridor: a few thin lines that marked the frames of the doorways, and small two-by-two inch red squares to the right of each. The red squares seemed to be a part of the wall itself. There were no control panels or seeming method of access. Otherwise, the white corridor had rounded edges, making it hard to discern where floor ended and wall began, and the very surfaces of the corridor all gave off a steady white glow.

"A bit uncomfortable, to say the least," Tak said, huffing himself through the hatch that tried to hug around his large circumference. His ears twitched, and his dark black eyes squinted against the brightness. "This place makes me uneasy, cap."

"You are descended from rodents, Tak," Matthew mused as he strode a little ways down the corridor.

"Don't start with that tripe again. I'm just as human as you are, all things considered. Moreso, if you want to talk mortality rates."

Matthew didn't reply. Instead, he was carefully scrutinizing the corridor. As Teresa got up into the corridor, she strode up behind him. "What are you looking at?"

"There are no seams."

"No what?"

"There are no segments to this corridor," Matthew said, pointing out how smooth the entire thing was. He ran a hand along a wall as he began walking, his fingers not picking up a single deviation. "Either these people are master craftsmen, or this ship is something else entirely."

"What else could it be?" Teresa said, venom in her voice. She never was the most creatively-minded Eternals out there.

Matthew merely shrugged. "Not sure, but I just have an odd feeling..."

After the crew had finally assembled around the hatch, Matthew tilted his head towards the one direction they seemed allowed to go. "Let's get on with it. Don't anybody forget your manners."

Making their way down the corridor, the crew came upon another doorway. This one was twice the width of the others, with a seam in the middle where two doors met. The panel to the right glowed yellow. When they came closer, the doorways opened. What lay beyond made everyone gasp at once.

Matthew found himself staring at a single gangway of hardened, dark steel. To either side, above, and below, was open space. Or what looked like it. There was no rapid decompression, no blood boiling. After a few moments to catch his breath, Matthew stepped out onto the gangway. Across from where he stood, there was what looked to be a massive space station. It had no particular shape, but rather seemed like a modular structure that had had piece after piece added to it as necessary. It stretched out for many miles beyond where they were docked, with dozens of other starships of various unusual makes docked to it.

"What the hell is it?" Liz asked from behind Matthew. Matthew could not even answer. Instead, he took a few steps forward, feeling a sense of vertigo. Below, there stretched a huge, beautiful planet that seemed almost entirely made up of ocean. Even Earth did not come close in water coverage. White streaks of cloud and cyclonic storms were scattered here and there. Directly beneath was a delta-shaped piece of land that looked maybe half the size of the Australian continent, and had two sides consisting entirely of mountain ranges, rendering much of it to what seemed like a vast desert.

Looking around, Matthew saw two moons a good distance off. One was blood red, the other a silvery white that seemed more familiar, except it was not pockmarked like Earth's moon was. Feeling a little more daring now, Matthew inched towards the edge of the walkway. He stretched his fingers far out over the edge, leaning precariously outwards. Liz bit her lip with worry but said nothing. The others held their breath. Then, Matthew's fingers hit something. It wasn't an invisible wall, however. It was open space. Two feet out from the edge, the corridor of atmosphere simply stopped. Matthew pulled his hand back, staring at his frozen and damaged fingertips, too awestruck to feel the pain coursing through them.

"You seem impressed."

Everyone turned sharply towards the source of the voice. There Bella stood, that defiant little smirk on her face. Her brilliant blue eyes and golden hair only seemed all the more beautiful amongst the stars.

"I am," Matthew said, standing upright carefully. "It's a pleasure to meet you in person, Bella."

Bella's radiant smile seemed to falter ever so slightly. "It won't be for long." With that, she started forward, and slipped a piece of paper into Matthew's hand, giving him a gentle kiss on the cheek before marching past the others, leaving in her wake an upset-looking Teresa and almost livid-looking Liz.

"What the hell was that about?" Liz snapped as Bella disappeared from view.

Matthew had been staring after Bella. Had his face shown anything but the stern consideration it bore, Liz would have questioned him as to his thoughts. But this was the kind of face she remembered him having when something was troubling him so very deeply.

"What is it?" Lizzy said, the anger melting away rather quickly, but not altogether.

Matthew held out the slip of paper to her. Liz took it. As she did, the rest of the crew made their way onto the walkway. Byirnah was looking around for any signs of how this passage was constructed, the others were trying to crowd around Liz to read the message. Just as they vacated the ship, the hatch closed.

Liz didn't even notice as the ship began pulling away. She couldn't stop reading what was scrawled on that slip of paper.

You are all going to die. I'm sorry.

"Hey! The ship's leaving us!" Tak said, rushing back to the end of the gangway and coming to a halt at its edge. "She's got our ship!"

"It's not going to matter," Liz said, letting the others get a good look at the paper. "Even if we had the ship, we'd be no match for that kind of technology."

"What do you see, Liz?" Matthew said, falling too easily back into that pattern, the one where Liz started putting the pieces together. Little did they know back then that her capability would burgeon into something so immense in its scope.

"Nothing. We're trapped, so far as I know," Liz sighed. "And I don't think it matters where we ended up in this galaxy. All the communications were routed through one central point. I'm guessing that's exactly where we have been brought."

"I would think that's more than just a guess," Matthew said gravely, and turned towards the station and began walking.

"Where the hell are you going!?" Teresa yelled, even as Liz followed dutifully. "Don't you guys realize what you just said? They're going to kill us."

"I know," Matthew said, stopping briefly. "But there's a reason Bella snuck us that note. She took a risk in doing that, that much is clear. We can't act like we know anything, otherwise our would-be murderers will take even further precautions to ensure we march exactly where they want us to. For the time being, there still remains the pretense of cordiality. If there's a way to get out of this, we'll keep an eye out."

The others grudgingly began to follow along, Teresa doing so only after watching everyone else go by. When they got to the end of the corridor, they were met by two low servants. Their noses were slightly upturned. One's forehead was broad and sloping, the other had greasy-looking black hair covering his. Their eyes were a little too wide, and so were their mouths. They bowed low, but not before Matthew noted just how doting and loyal their faces seemed when they beheld the trio of Eternals leading the march, Teresa having caught up with Matthew and Lizzy.

"Thank you," Matthew said in Aramaic with a slight nod as the two bowing figures pushed the doors open behind them. He caught the eyes of one as it dared a glance up at him, an expression of thankfulness on its face unlike any he'd ever seen.

"These creatures are conditioned to serve eternals," Liz noted, having seen the same. "They looked at you as if you were God giving them a personalized sacrament or something."

"For them, Eternals may very well be gods," Matthew answered darkly.

They were then led by a third of these low creatures, and this one had a more respectable demeanor about him. He wore a white jumpsuit that had a thin black collar as its only adornment amongst the solid white, and he led them to a small shuttle sitting in the center of the room that they had entered. Here, the walls were again white, as was the ceiling. But, at the very least, the floor was the same kind of dark steel that made up the gangway.

"Why all this if they're going to just kill us?" Teresa whispered to Matthew.

Matthew shot her a warning glance. "Don't mention that, we don't know who can hear," he mouthed to her, following that by pointing at her, then at his eyes, then spread his hand around in a sweeping gesture. Just keep an eye out.

They boarded the shuttle, which had two large wings folded up above the fuselage, which looked like the body of a bee. The front segment was where the pilot sat, which was the low creature in the white jumpsuit. They boarded in the second segment. Behind them, in what could be the giant bee's stinger, was what Matthew figured to be the engine.

Once aboard, there was no warning or shout to them from the pilot. They simply dropped, the floor beneath the ship dropping out from under them. Down they plummeted, hitting atmo only a few minutes later, flames shooting up on either side of them visible through the minimal strip of windows on the port and starboard sides. The roar of their reentry filled their ears, and the sudden friction against the atmosphere pushed them back into their seats once again after the sickening sensation of free fall.

Finally, they seemed to be slowing, pressure building and pushing them down harder into their seats, as the immensity of the ocean spread out beneath them. The wings on the body of the ship deployed outwards to bring them to a glide. The engines only then started up, propelling them forward. They banked hard, and to starboard, Matthew could see land. High mountains reached high above them, at least half-covered in snow. Below was a lush tropical landscape along the shore. In the middle of it all, nestled just above where the thick jungle gave way to open grass along the sides of two mountains, there stood an immense white castle. It made anything on earth seem like a cottage by comparison.

"By the belt..." Yardley whispered in one of his rare moments of input. "I have never seen anything so large."

The others simply gave their agreement through their silence.