First Song

I spent the next fifteen minutes scritching and stroking the squirrel. It would run from one shoulder to the other, staring into my eyes before allowing me to reach up and pet it. I think it was actually more interested in Muse than me, but it was still adorable. The claws were painful as it climbed around – but the adorable won me over.

My head was also still aching. Muse was doing her best to save me from the worst of it, but pangs of pain would be accompanied by the return of patches of memory from before I’d blacked out. It was coming back to me, although the order of events was a bit hazy.

I’d tried to ask Rishaan about what he’d seen, but he was almost at a total loss for words. He told me about how he’d started to leave when I’d been surrounded, but as soon as he heard loud bangs, he turned back. I guess I was ultimately grateful that he’d ignored what I’d asked him to do.

We continued on the motorway until the exit for the next services, my stomach growling its distaste at the current food situation. I had been picking at some of the snacks we’d prepared but I just needed actual food.

There was a debate as to whether we should go inside to eat, but I was adamant that was a terrible idea. I’m not sure if someone had been able to get footage of what had happened – we could be fugitives already.

Once we’d come to a stop, I slipped out of the back seat and moved around to the passenger’s side.

“Yeah, let’s just do the drive-through,” I eventually decided for us both.

He gave me a nod of agreement.

Rish ordered us some of the cheaper food they had on offer – we were both students after all – but I asked him to make mine a large meal. I was absolutely famished.

Not entirely sure what a squirrel could eat, I looked it up on my phone. A little browsing later, we also added some carrot sticks to our order. I wasn’t sure if it would be healthy for the little thing, but it had to be hungry.

The moment our food arrived, I could barely resist wolfing the whole thing down. Rish watched me open-mouthed as I devoured the burger. Squirrel friend just nibbled on its carrots, earning itself a scritch.

“Sorry,” I managed between mouthfuls of my burger. Has food always tasted this good?

“No, no… you’re good. You’re a, er, growing girl,” he said, observing me with a suppressed grin.

I laughed, then continued to munch away at my hamburger and fries.

After a while he asked, “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

My first reaction was to shrug, but the question had me thinking. Honestly, I had no idea what had happened to the men that I’d hurt – I was confident that they’d all been men. I didn’t know if they were just knocked out, severely injured or… worse.

The last thought was quite sobering, and I held my hands over my mouth. I managed to swallow what I was eating, but I immediately felt sick. What had I done? I hadn’t meant to hurt them. It just… happened.

“You alright?” Rish asked, when I hadn’t answered his question.

I managed a small nod and tried to give him a reassuring smile, although I could tell that it didn’t look genuine. Like a true Briton, he didn’t pry any further.

“You know, you’re actually lucky,” he continued on, covering for my silence. “Your face isn’t in any system yet. They have no idea who you are, even if they caught you on camera.”

“I guess…” I managed to mumble back, turning to look out the window.

‘You still have a week of changes left, Erin. How you appear should be sufficiently different to make tracing you difficult,’ Muse contributed, attempting to make me feel better.

So I just needed to hide for a while? And just like that I’d escape responsibility for what had happened?

A tiny part of the weight I was feeling lifted from me, but my apprehension was mostly for the fate of those officers I’d hurt.

‘I did my best

to save them from the worst of your discharge,’ she replied. ‘If they received swift medical assistance then they stand a good chance of survival.’

A good chance of survival. That’s all?

I glanced at Rishaan, doing my best effort at an appreciative smile, then pulled out my phone again. I wiped my fingers on a napkin to avoid making the screen all greasy, then searched for any recent news. I really wanted to know what had happened to them.

My stomach felt like it was plummeting down a bottomless pit the moment I read the first headline. There had been a series of explosions at the site of the ‘unexploded bomb’ – but there wasn’t a lot of detail. Emergency services were currently on-scene but there had been reports of injuries.

Great.

Rish had taken that opportunity to check his phone, too, and his expression was grim. He’d decided to investigate the conspiracy websites for anything related to today.

“Someone released a video of what happened,” he said, flicking a glance in my direction. “It’s pixelated to shit, but you can sort of make out the colours you’re wearing.”

I blinked, and leaned in closer to watch the video that was playing. It was shaky, and the quality was terrible, but you could see the web of lightning. Several seconds after, there was the sound of distorted crackling booms. As the video continued, another figure – Rishaan – walked up to me, dragging me away. He was much harder to make out and was really just a few indistinct pixels.

I grimaced at how destructive it all looked, but I managed to mumble, “Well… we really don’t want to be out in public with these clothes on.”

He nodded in eager agreement. His phone chose that moment to start buzzing, pulling his attention away.

I watched him, feeling a tension beginning to rise as he squinted, examining something closely. Eventually he turned to me with an inscrutable expression, “Huh.” That didn’t sound good.

“What?” I asked, trying to get a better look at the screen of his phone.

“Someone replied to your picture – er, they just sent an image of an eye back.”

Confused, I gestured for him to hand me his phone. He slipped it into my hands, and then I was looking at an image of someone else’s golden, glowing iris.

---

- Casey -

You know, I kinda wish there were more classical buildings back in the States. Sure, DC and the north-east have a bunch, plus we’ve got skyscrapers and shit, but this… this is a masterpiece.

I was staring up at the soaring double towers of some medieval cathedral, basking in the sheer fucking majesty of the thing. Huge stained-glass windows were held between ornate flying buttresses, all of it adorned with expertly carved gargoyles.

My shades were keeping out most of the glare as I stared upwards, but I still needed to use my hand to shield my eyes.

How medieval folk had managed to build anything this high back then was just mind-boggling.

Naturally, I took a picture of it with my cellphone. Click.

‘We should be training, Cassandra,’ Hunter was moaning to me. They always wanted to do training. Today was my day. They only ever used my full name when they were annoyed, because they knew it bothered me.

“Training is for future Casey. Today is for now Casey,” I said, taking another picture of the windows.

They were silent after that – probably sulking. Hunter liked to sulk when we weren’t doing what they wanted to do.

If you were going to save the world, the least you’d want to do is find out exactly what it was that you were saving. They’d never told me what I was saving it from, though. They said that I just needed to train for now.

I sighed loudly and turned from the cathedral. It was nice, but there was a lot more of the city to see. This place was just packed with old buildings and interesting architecture, not least the religious stuff. Even the streets were cobbled.

The weather was pretty darned hot today, so I was actually happy that the roads were narrow and the buildings tall. It kept the between-places at least bearable.

Someone on the sidewalk wasn’t watching where they were going, and I was forced to dance around them. They earned my best New York scowl for that one. Hey, I’m walkin’ here!

I turned to see what had caught their attention and froze. I was next to a bar, but inside I could see one of their screens.

It was showing some broadcasts of breaking news. Most of the subtitles were in German, so I only got the general gist of what was happening, but I could see the video in the background. It looked like it was taken from real far away, and was pretty blocky, but you couldn’t miss the giant tree and the massive lightning explosion.

Wow.

My cell was out of my pocket in a flash, looking up an English version of the story.

It was one of the first stories I saw when I checked my favorite news site. Everything about it was breaking news, including the single paragraph of text below an image of the tree.

Unknown cause, emergency services present and people seriously injured. Alright then.

‘Hmm,

’ said Hunter, cutting into my thoughts. They’d probably decided to complain that we weren’t training again.

‘I know who that is,’ they continued.

Taking off my shades, I edged closer to the window, watching the video as it repeated, over and over.

“Who is it?” I whispered.

‘They refer to themselves as ‘a-being-that-inspires-positive-growth’,’ Hunter replied, with what sounded like a sniff. ‘Personally, I think they inspire trouble more than growth.’

I pushed down a laugh. It sounded like Hunter really didn’t like whoever they were.

On a whim, I put the name they’d given me into my search bar.

---

- Erin -

There was a pause before Muse announced, ‘It is Artemis.’

Oh fuck.

“They found us,” I said, disbelieving.

Rish looked at me confused, reaching to take his phone back for another look. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Who did?”

“Muse recognises other symbionts by their glow, or something. I don’t know. But she recognised this as Artemis,” I explained, gesturing towards his phone.

He glanced at me, eyebrows raised, “Seriously? That’s insane.”

“I want to speak with her,” I said, matter-of-factly.

He stared at me like I was insane for a long while. I didn’t back down, and kept his gaze.

After a long sigh, he relented and guided me through the process that I’d need to set up an encrypted chat with them. The username was SeaKo34.

In the meantime, Rish sent them all the details that they’d need to be able to get in contact with me. It was extensive – he wasn’t taking any chances.

The great thing about him being so cautious is that he learned a lot of really helpful internet security tricks. He was basically my tech guy right now.

While I was waiting for a message to come through, Rish started the car and began the journey back home. Compared to earlier this morning, he seemed way more tense.

It only took five minutes of driving for him to tell me to take off my hoodie, and keep it hidden in the foot well. He was worried that someone might recognise my clothes.

While I was doing that, he was removing his jacket and throwing it on the seat behind him.

This was getting into serious paranoia territory. Did he really think we needed to do this? I found myself slouching a little further down in my seat, trying to be even more inconspicuous. It was infectious.

Hopefully all of these tricks he was using would make it ludicrously hard for anyone to track who we were. Rish said it should – and I trusted his opinion. He was the one that had been hanging out in tinfoil hat spheres, after all.

It was half an hour before I received the first message. Excitement and anxiety were both duelling for supremacy in my brain while I waited. The moment the window on my phone lit up, I felt a surge of adrenaline and rushed to read it.

SeaKo34: Holy shit someone’s paranoid

Me: Yeah, sorry. My friend says it’s necessary

SeaKo34: So, what’s the deal?

SeaKo34: That was one fuck off light show

SeaKo34: I think the whole world saw it

Me: Uh.

Was it really safe for me to open up to them right now? How did we know that they weren’t someone trying to track us down?

‘Ask them for the name of their symbiont,’ Muse suggested. ‘If they are who we think, then they can be trusted.’

I sent a message asking exactly that, and got a single word back; Hunter.

‘Unoriginal. Typical,' Muse scoffed.

Me: Muse says that it’s typical for Hunter to be so unoriginal

SeaKo34: Muse? Cute

SeaKo34: Hahaha you just set Hunter off holy shit

SeaKo34: They won’t stop complaining

An awkward thirty seconds passed before another message arrived.

SeaKo34: Alright they finally stopped

I was already smiling at their messages. It felt incredible that there was someone out there that was in the same situation I was. They, too, had some alien speaking into their head and they weren’t freaking out about it.

For a while I was trying to think of how to explain what happened at the oak tree. It was something that I regretted so much, and every centimetre of me wished I could go back and… I don’t know. Try something else?

In the end, I just told SeaKo34 how Muse had left a part of herself and I’d gone back to get it. I also mentioned losing control of whatever had surged through me.

Rish looked over at me from time to time, catching me smiling or laughing at my phone in response to something that they’d said. “What’d they say?” he would keep asking me, and I’d have to dictate the messages to him. I could tell that he was feeling left out, though. The metaphorical third wheel.

Far too quickly we pulled up outside my house. It was already getting on into the afternoon, and Sarah would be back soon.

“Do you want one of my old t-shirts or something? It might help disguise you a little bit,” I offered to him as I was stepping out of the car. I mean, I was never going to really need them again, except perhaps to sleep in.

He hesitated, but eventually acquiesced.

Our squirrel friend jumped onto me once I was outside of the car, running up my torso to eventually sit on my shoulder. I had no idea what I was going to do with this thing. I had zero clue how to look after it.

I fetched a plain black t-shirt from my room, and offered it to Rish. He was still sitting in his car when I got back downstairs.

He accepted the clothing from me, gratefully.

“Do you want to come inside?” I asked him, turning a little and gesturing towards the door.

He gave me a tight smile and shook his head, “I think I’ve had enough Erin time for today. I’ll head home, if that’s alright?”

My heart sank a little at the idea of my best friend leaving already, but I guess he did need to drive back to his family, too. It’s not like now was a great time to play badminton.

I ran around to the driver’s side of the car, and tapped on the window. It rolled down slowly and I leaned in to give him a hug.

“Drive safely, Rish, and thank you so much for everything.”

“You too, Erin. See you soon, yeah?” he answered back, that cocky grin returning.

I watched him until he’d disappeared from view, then headed back inside. I was worried that I’d done something to upset him, or maybe I’d just generally been a bit weird. Granted, I’d also possibly made him a wanted man – that might have a negative effect on a relationship.

The squirrel received a few nuts once I got into the kitchen – we always kept a bunch of them around. The website I’d checked earlier even said that you didn’t need to remove the shells, which was a bonus.

My phone had buzzed at me some more, and I knew that several messages from SeaKo34 were waiting for me. I secluded myself away in my bedroom and got to reading.

---

I heard Sarah come home not long after I got in, and she knocked on my door to say hi as she passed by. I gave her my best big sister smile and asked her how her day had been. She listed off the different classes she’d had, plus recounted the on-going drama with her ex-girlfriend.

That was making me annoyed – that she had to put up with shit just for being who she was.

“Alright, who needs slapping?” I asked her, only half-joking. Though I was a little worried that if I tried something like that right now, that more people could get seriously hurt.

She laughed though, and said it was fine. She could handle it herself.

We hugged, and she went back to her room.

My attention once again returned to SeaKo34.

We chatted away for a little while longer, discussing how we’d managed to find Muse and Hunter. A mention of the squirrel had her sending several lines of laughing emojis.

There was a lull in our conversation and I thought that maybe they’d wandered off after getting bored. I was just about to put my phone down when I received another message.

SeaKo34: Well shit you are a girl

Uh. What?

Me: Uh yeah how did you know?

Another pause while I waited for them to get back to me.

SeaKo34: I thought you might be but the efit just confirmed it

A slow dread began to rise up in me, and I quickly flicked to a news website. My fingers were shaking when I tapped open the article from earlier. It had now been expanded to include a lot more information on what had happened, and I scrolled through it.

It turns out that the police officers were all still alive, although two of them were in critical condition. A wave of guilt washed over me, but I was at least glad they were alive.

There was also mention of a woman that was wanted for questioning – and they provided an e-fit.

It was a passable likeness to me, although they definitely got quite a few things wrong.

‘I am confident that no one will associate this image with you by the end of next week,’ Muse reassured me, calming my growing anxiety.

I went back to the messages, where SeaKo34 had been waiting.

Me: It doesn’t look anything like me

SeaKo34: Really? That’s a shame

SeaKo34: She’s kinda cute

Oh.

Was it getting hot in here, or was it me?