Endosymbiosis

5. Hospital Discharge

I thought they had abolished the Oasis's immobilizing gases protocol, but, apparently I was an exception. What an honor.

The tremulon approached me. He didn't even needed a mask, as the gas entered his body and had no effect. Even though he had no support, his body stretched high in front of me, in some evil joke of the universe. If he had teeth, I'm sure he would be smiling.

"Your mother would be ashamed of such a bad idea..." He said, his vibration being translated into words in my brain. My body tensed.

"No... She would be proud of how far I've come this time." I growled, not knowing if I was really more right than the tremulon. "You should have known by now that I wouldn't stay... Humans aren't good with commitment." I shrugged, but a lot of my body language was not understood there, which was great when I wanted to go out scattering middle fingers on bad noxdiems.

Then I realized my movements were returning.

"I thought you were different."

"Why?"

"Because you lasted until now."

"And that was a mistake." My tone rose. There was no honor in insisting on that torture for the pride of surviving it, a lesson others learned long before me. "It's my time to go."

"If you leave the Oasis before the end of your term, you will be sentenced for treason." His tone sounded authoritative, as I knew it, but I didn't care about his words. I was already imprisoned.

"I know..." My fingers landed on the floor. "And that's exactly why you won't find me."

When I pushed myself up from the ground, they shot at me, leaving a hole in the floor where my head should have been. Still stunned by the fog, I staggered toward the ambulance the stranger had unlocked and hid in the white shadows. The floor danced under my feet and the walls breathed against my hands, pulling and pushing until I stumbled to the floor. I crawled as silently as I could before I was on my feet again, hearing the footsteps of the guards behind me, the lazers of their weapons cutting through the fog and hunting me down.

At some point, one of them shouted that he had seen me and I tried to run, but my legs failed.

Before the guards approached, however, the thunderous roar of a beast filled the mist, giving me just enough adrenaline to make me run. Those roars sounded like they came from another dimension, because there would never be something so massive, powerful and wicked in this one.

I sent a look back, but found only the endless white from where the sounds of the end emanated, reminding me of visions in which space was torn apart as death galloped towards us...

I didn't need to see to know what was going on.

And I needed to get out of there immediately.

• • • ֍ • • •

One day, under the orders of alien species never seen before, humanity finished building the pore.

It was a gigantic rim that could embrace the entire Earth, fed by a swarm of solar plates that orbited our sun.

When all the rays converged on the center of the hoop for the first time, an explosion lit up the space like a pulsar, tearing its mesh in the center of the pore to connect it to something beyond... And opened the door that brought the worlds of the Milky Way together.

So, simple like that, Earth was a part of Itopis, the Interstellar Empire.

• • • ֍ • • •

I opened the ambulance door as if I could rip it open and flung myself dazedly into the driver's seat. I'd never driven an ambulance before, but I'd read enough about it to at least know how to turn it on - if its buttons, which seemed to float around me when they should have been parked on the dashboard, would let me press them. My hands scrambled over the controls and when I finally managed to hit them, the vehicle sped up, zigzagging through the curtain of gas as the corridor walls seemed to move.

Then an explosion of gelatin covered the windshield. Damn it! I wasn't panning to murder anyone today!

I pressed a button to clear it and watched the remains of the tremulon spread across the floor as I cut through the fog away, amid the screams of the guards and the growls of something worse. Bodies were thrown against the ambulance, partially torn apart by what could only have been claws... And then they were pulled back into the pristine white that shielded my eyes from what was happening.

I reluctantly stopped the ambulance between the first and second sets of garage doors, in the transition zone between the artificial atmosphere of the Oasis and the vacuum of space. I had to get out of the ambulance to press a shiny button on the wall, and I beat it until the first door started to descend, in a silent countdown.

Come on! Come on! Come on!

When the first door was halfway across, I saw a distant shadow in the fog, approaching with the speed of a jet, his teeth covered with a lime green liquid... That once was inside the guards.

And now those teeth approached my neck!

Even through the fog, he could see me clearly and even under my skin, he could smell my blood, mixing with the fear that escaped through my pores. He could hear my heartbeat, as hurried as my hand against the button, and I knew he was eager to taste it.

When the door descended far enough that I could no longer see his head, the fevino thundered, so violent that his sound resonated with my bones, almost capable of shattering them.

With only a few inches left for the door to close to the floor, the beast rolled through the tiny space and trapped himself there with me.

I pressed myself against the wall, trying to disappear inside it, but then the beast's head ripped in half like a second skin, revealing the human behind it.

He stared at me with a venomous smile, choked with adrenaline.

"Were you going to leave me behind?"

"I thought you were going to kill me..."

He got up slowly.

"Not me..." He sent me a long look. "But he was."

And then the stranger got into the ambulance, even though I was the one who needed saving.

• • • ֍ • • •

My mom used to tell me that, out there, the universe would swallow me alive, but if I were bitter enough, it would spit me back... And if I were poisonous, it would learn to not mess with me.

"You will learn..." She used to say. "Or else you will die."

Now that my eyes stared out at the vastness ahead, I hoped I'd learned enough.