Endosymbiosis

27. Memories

I didn't want to be a part of that game, borrowed and used until there was nothing left in me to offer... I wanted to do something as exceptional as my mother, never to see again the pain of others that reminded me of mine... And for that, I just needed to get to the core.

We were guided by the metriona to a room with white walls and floor, peaceful as if there was nothing inside it that could disturb me. In the center of the room rose a cube filled with a turbid liquid, where a bluish and rough organ floated, covered with threads that converged on a needle hanging outside the box. I approached what had once been in a creature's body and soon realized that that organ had definitely never belonged to a human.

"This is the brain of your mother's killer." The metriona revealed, taking the floor from under my feet. How could that little blue sponge have been responsible for so much pain? How could something so small and fragile have collapsed my world? "There are the answers to your questions, Donecea. Want to know them?"

I nodded. The metriona guided the dangling needle towards me and I brushed my hair out of its way with trembling fingers. The needle pierced the back of my neck, tearing through the skin and muscle fibers until it reached the nerves, with a burning stab that spread through my mind. I closed my eyes and let the darkness behind my lids be taken over by the memories of that preserved brain as its electrical impulses flowed into my mind.

The question exploded in my mind... Who... Who wanted my mother dead... And my need to know channeled everything until dim images colored in my eyes, materializing opulent beings that could only be Aulics. They were talking about something I couldn't understand... Until I heard Gaxy's name. One of the Aulics had a deep blue skin and a bulbous stinger protruding from his back, - the same pione Kadi had "poisoned" in the Destruction District - in the past, talking about Gaxy with so many others as if her fate were theirs to decide.

I concentrated on trying to form sentences that were coherent with the words the killer didn't know, until I could hear one of the Aulics say:

"The humans she is sending to the rebels are strengthening them..."

Strengthening? So my mom was helping the rebellion?

"Do you think that's what she wants?"

"It doesn't matter if it's on purpose or not. She needs to be stopped."

One of the Aulics let out a sound that might have been a laugh, resonating in my mind with the ethereality of a fageine.

"She's a human. So this won't be difficult..." I blinked away from the illusion, even though my mind kept connected to it.

"Why would they..." I hesitated to finish.

"The Aulics were already working on creating their own cure. And they didn't need the help of a human who was betraying on them." So all of her work had become nothing... Because our importance was relative. "And you, with the cure and Gaxy genes, getting involved with one of the revolution's energy suppliers..." The main supplier, in fact. "No wonder they tried to throw you in the sun... They wouldn't want another human among the Aulics"

"I never wanted to become a..."

"It wasn't what it looked like." The metrona revealed. "Nor was Earth supposed to have been added to the Empire in the first place..." The Artifact that is sent to the worlds as an invitation to Itopis was not sent by the Aulics to Earth... But the revolution led it astray. The humans had been just an act of rebellion, a stolen position, because we would never have truly deserved it for our efforts - maybe never enough; maybe never seen. "I still remember Bleine's reluctance to point a human to the Aulics... Until Gaxy. But, apparently, that wasn't a permanent decision."

All that time I had thought my mother had been killed by those who didn't want to be healed, but, in reality, she had been destroyed by those who wanted what she wanted... And I, trying to follow her steps described in the lines of letters, headed towards the same end.

But how had her life inevitably been snuffed out?

The images then filtered into a response I wasn't sure I was prepared to know, showing me, behind the killer's eyes, a projectile invading my mother's head... The explosion of the shot deafened me and her body collapsed to an abyss that I felt pulling me in too...

But then I ripped the needle out of my neck.