Changeling

1.6

“Retirement fund, he said?” the left gleam from internal affairs asked.

Nestra methodically removed her fingers from the cup of coffee the medic had given her. She was in her bodysuit with a rescue cover on. It was warm under her but still, she felt light-headed and a little feverish now that the stims had faded. She was also exhausted. On every level.

The space inside of the command tent felt stifling. The two rats were dressed like spooks complete with sunglasses inside the fucking tent at night.

“Yeah,” she repeated with some hesitation.

The two checked notes, or maybe they were communicating, somehow. One of them tapped against the steel table they were sitting at.

“Are you certain this is what Mr Wilson said? You were wounded at that time, and suffering from heavy blood loss, right? The timing checks out.”

What the?

Ah.

So, this was how it was going to be.

Having the police compromised on paper would look bad for them, especially if they’d not seen it coming. It was also possible they wanted to keep things under wrap for a separate case. It was also possible that they were completely corrupt.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

Nestra was tired. Bone-weary. Not just physically but morally as well. There was no point insisting on being right, even though she wanted to, and even if keeping quiet represented everything she hated about society. One person had to stand up first to start anything.

And that person would be the first to fall.

Nestra was not that person. Not today. She was tired, and she was going home to lick her wounds. This battle was tomorrow’s Nestra’s.

“It would be best not to include in your reports the elements you are not completely sure about.”

“I may have misheard,” Nestra conceded with a heart filled with the cold acid of guilt and self-loathing.

“That might be so.”

“It’s all I remember. Are we done?”

Should not have said that. The gleams stiffened.

“Please?” she added, this time a bit more politely.

“You’re probably exhausted. Do go home to rest. We will be waiting for your complete report.”

“Sure thing.”

Nestra stepped out. Around her, the police camp was a hive of activity. The broken remnants of the assault teams occupied half of it, and the suited gleams whose job it was to distribute the blame took the rest. People glared and the mood was bleak. Nestra blessed her good luck that she was too insignificant to get axed as she made her way to the district exit.

“Hey,” a voice said nearby.

It was the viridian cop gleam from earlier. He was sitting on a supply crate in a new, clean armored vest. None of the earlier wounds were still visible though he looked rugged and exhausted.

Nestra felt cornered. Gleams didn’t talk to baselines unless they wanted something, in her experience.

Maybe it was recognition.

“Thanks for saving me earlier.”

“Least I could do. And your teammate, Preach, will make it as well,” he said.

“I know. I went to see them.”

“I apologize for failing to save the others.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Not even Shinran could bring the dead back and he was Earth’s most powerful healer.

“I assume you are heading back,” he continued like a man grasping at straw, pushing a dead conversation past the proper burial time. Nestra just wanted to go home.

“Sorry, sir. Really tired.”

“Of course. And I imagine you would not want to… to return to the precinct after everything. Let me call you an executive cab. I’ll use my card.”

“Eeeh.”

She hoped he wasn’t trying to go with her. Being alone with a gleam in a space they controlled was dangerous. She hoped he was just being nice but she couldn’t take the chance.

“Please. Let me help. I just…”

He extended his hands, light smile growing brittle.

“I just want to help.”

“Ok,” Nestra finally said, following her gut feeling.

They walked through the checkpoint, the gleam staying at a respectable distance. His uniform and shiny eyes made the process easy since no one stopped her for her ID. Outside of the camp, there were journalists waiting for their pittance of public statements but the gleam discouraged them with a shake of his head. A hover car was waiting by the curb, long, sleek and black. Executive cab, the most high-end transportation network in Threshold. The gleam gestured and the door opened.

Nestra turned as she was going in. The gleam was still waiting at a respectful distance. It would be weird to leave like that. Dangerously disrespectful as well. He might perceive her as ungrateful and that was extremely dangerous. She decided to share her name not just because it was a sign of trust but because he most likely knew it anyway.

“Thanks. I’m Nestra.”

“Valerian of House Nephrite. Sorry, I just…”

He took a deep breath, seemingly coming to a decision.

“I know what it feels to be the odd one out. Anyway. Be safe.”

Ah yes, it happened sometimes. Some people recognized her as that one weird anomaly. Huh. Nestra watched his receding back for a second before hopping in. A basic AI requested an address which she gave. The flight over the city gave her a wonderful view of district one, the tight clusters of gravity-defying skyscrapers still ruling over the encroaching arcologies. Their innumerable lights felt as majestic and distant as stars. They were also powered by mana crystals, the outrageous spending a testament to Threshold’s affluence and power, the mightiest of fortress cities. It was all Nestra could do to watch those and remain conscious. She had to slap her cheeks a few times not to keel over even with strong coffee buzzing through her veins.

The cab dropped her on her front door, forcing her to rush out in her survival cover and bodysuit in the weirdest rendition of a walk of shame. Anyone looking out right now would assume she’d banged a high gleam and then been sent home in a nice ride. She rushed up the stairs to her bedroom and lasted long enough to remove her itchy body suit before she collapsed.

Then, she dreamt.

***

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It started like a familiar dream. She stood in her mind palace, the elegant room as devoid of a core as ever, yet something had changed. The light was different. Where before, a golden glow shone on the neoclassical design like a fairytale cliche, now it bore a strange hue that seemed to absorb colors. All was gray, black or white, and yet the variations were both rich and deeply pleasant. More importantly, some doors had unlocked.

Nestra had always assumed that the doors were decorative in this highly symbolic place; it had never occurred to her that a door might lead to something else. Now three of them waited invitingly, half-open like whispered promises. She moved to the first and found herself in a cavern with soft, round stalactites covered in bioluminescent growths. Planetoids danced over a blue puddle, never touching. She extended a hand for the brightest one to come, and it did. It levitated over her open palm until she felt its nature. It tasted like a burst of wind, a perfect step, an uncanny dodge that left her opponent dumbfounded. The light colors on its surface shifted in airy patterns. It was barely awake though, so Nestra released it to rejoin the eternal waltz while she called the next one.

That metallic planet tasted like one last rep and one more kilometer. It tasted like healing bruises and standing up again and again. Its surface was cratered by too many impacts to count and harder for it. It too, was barely waking up while the others remained dull. There was potential here but it would need more… it would need more…

More deaths.

Many more deaths.

The right deaths.

It made perfect sense to dream Nestra.

She was curious to see more. Leaving, she found that the next room was a castle corridor decorated by shields and suits of armor. Again, only two were active. One was an old middle-age plate suit, gray and battered. Serviceable, though it was nothing special and would certainly not stop a bullet. The other item was a kite shield hanging nearby. Its surface was a window into an ocean suffering the fury of a devastating storm. Bolts stabbed the mountainous waves every second with unceasing rage.

The rest remained inert. Waiting.

Nestra kept exploring. Even in the dream, a sense of excitement filled her. There was no core but there was something else and that something else, well, it was better than nothing. In fact, it looked like it could be much, much better than nothing. She knew it would take a lot of work to wake everything up, yet that failed to dampen her mood. She had been denied this opportunity for her whole life. She had begged for the chance to work at things. And now, it looked like she would finally get it, not in the way she hoped, and perhaps that was for the best.

The last room was the simplest one and also the most awake. It held a tiny core crackling with energy. She recognized the mana manipulation ability of an electrokinetic yet the colors were wrong. Everything was gray.

“Weird,” Nestra said.

And then she woke up.

***

“Huh, what a strange dream.”

Nestra placed a hand over her face, the skin inexplicably smooth this morning. Maybe the stims were not completely out of her system yet? She also realized she’d forgotten to switch off the light.

Although, come to think of it, everything was in black and white.

“Hm. Lights off?”

Nothing changed. Fear started to worm in her mind.

“Light on?”

The lights switched on and colors returned. But… how? And she was feeling great. Well rested. What was going on? Had she overslept?

She approached a shutter. Outside, the world was a black and white vista besides the distant shape of the Wellington arcology, its blue and red lights displaying advertisements. The contrast was really strange. Nestra touched her eyes. They felt normal. Maybe she was not fully awake and a cold shower would do her some good. She frowned harder and made her way to the bathroom where a demon greeted her in her sink mirror.

At least, the reflection was like a demon but it was also clearly Nestra. The face was the same, if a little sharper. The body shape was mostly the same though a little taller. Really, the only differences were the uniform gray skin, the white hair, the small nubs of horns forming at the top of her forehead, and the black eyes. They were as dark as the void. Pure pits of darkness. Nestra didn’t panic because it was, quite obviously, her and this was, equally obviously, a dream.

“Huh.”

She settled to wait until something dream-like happened. Maybe her high school teacher would break through the wall to inform her she was late for her presentation. After all, Nestra was already naked and so dressed for the role, so to speak. When nothing like that happened, she decided to go for a coffee instead.

She walked downstairs and made herself one on her expensive machine. It tasted nice. She almost cut her tongue on her teeth. They felt weird in her mouth.

Climbing back to the bathroom, she checked them and realized they were now all a nacreous black, tapering off to a serrated end.

She also realized she still had mana. And it was not fading away. Out of curiosity, she called it forth and for the first time, for the first damn time in her life after thousands of attempts… it worked.

An electric current coursed from one hand to the other with a sharp crack though she barely felt more than a small pinch.

That, however, confirmed that she was fully awake.

Only then did she scream.

***

“Oh no oh no oh nonononononono this must be a dream. That’s it. I’m tripping balls.”

Nestra went over everything she’d done trying to determine if combat stims could lead to vivid hallucinations. The problem was, she would be sweaty and nauseous. Right now, she was feeling fantastic. Wide awake. Sound of mind if not of body.

“Riel dammit. Why.”

She walked over her house, touching random stuff to make sure it was still there. Displays showing family pictures. Her teddybear called Mr Slump which she would not confess she had even under torture. Bananas. She took a bite of the banana. It tasted sweet and a little too ripe.

She only stopped when a tap sounded on her door.

It was a single sound, not intrusive and she would have doubted it were it not for the fact it was three fucking AM and the entire district was as active as an accountant’s cadaver. No mana seeped under the entrance that she could tell and the first floor’s shutters were all closed. Nestra regretted that she’d left her sword with the rest of her gear. The security display was near the kitchen so she went there and the camera activated, showing a piece of curb and a side of fences. The only anomaly was the package.

There was a package on her porch.

Not a standard delivery cardboard box either but a white, nice box with a little bow on top. It was deliciously, suspiciously antiquated. It was also suspicious as fuck. The timing was not bad, it was fated. So Nestra watched the damn box and… nothing. No noise, no movements, nothing. She checked other cameras around the perimeter: not a thing to be seen.

Her paranoia spiked.

Because she knew she had to check it.

Nestra had no idea what was going on or if she was even a human anymore. She most certainly felt like herself and in control, no weird parasite or possession. She also knew that she had the appearance of something else and, in Threshold, that bore an immediate and strict consequence.

The fortress city had very strict rules when it came to suspicions of monster presence, and that rule was extermination. Oh, perhaps she could get away with being shipped to some lab for study but that was obviously a shit solution. So now she was pretty desperate and willing to open her door in the dead of night to check a suspicious package that might contain, for all she knew, a facehugger dipped in arcane batrachotoxin.

Nestra unlocked the door, opening it a little bit. The night’s cold air slapped her face. The dark night of the camera resolved into a bright, colorless landscape in her view. The package waited invitingly.

She grabbed it and pulled it like a gremlin. She shut the door as fast as she could. It slammed with a loud bang that scared her. Far in the distance, a dog barked.

Nestra rushed back to the security station. The cameras showed nothing at all. The package sat where she’d left it, on the kitchen table.

Just existing there.

Menacingly.

“Right. Right. Here goes.”

The cute little bow on top of the box came off easily, leaving behind a nondescript wooden box with a smiley drawn with some sort of pencil above the words ‘not a trap’. The bow itself was made of some cheap wrapping paper.

Nestra felt silly. She opened the thing before losing herself in conjectures.

It contained two items. The first was a message on an actual piece of paper. The second was a small ball rolled up in a wrinkled napkin. It smelled heavenly. She opened the paper first. Always read the manual before touching stuff.

Words danced in her mind. That was the best way to describe it. Strange, angular runes resolving in curves spoke their meaning directly into her psyche. The message was as weird as the means of delivery.

“Congratulations on waking up, little Nezhra!

Your first quest is to rebuild your Mask.

Go to a mirror and pour your image back over your head, just like water!”

There was more but Nestra didn’t care just quite yet. She rushed to the bathroom and stopped, looking once again into the starless pit of her own gaze. The nubs of her horns still felt solid under her fingers. At least she didn’t have claws. Yet.

Feeling ridiculous, she raised her hands over her head as if to contain liquid, then she poured.

Nothing happened.

Her instincts told her something ought to. She was just… doing it wrong. It didn’t matter that it made no sense. What mattered was hiding. She was vulnerable right now. Exposed. She needed the Mask.

Doing the same movement, she pretended to pour lies on the gray creature in the mirror. She needed the old Nestra. The one she’d grown up to be.

As if sprinkling ink over a white and black picture, colors bloomed on her. The white hair returned to its usual dark blonde, the black eyes became gray again, and her skin lost its doll-like luster to return to its pinkish and slightly scarred self, with the small hair and beauty spots and all the tiny imperfections that made Nestra, Nestra. It felt strange now, not exactly stifling but certainly not as natural as it used to be. The real Nestra was the gray thing and the human was a trick. A honey pot. A disguise. A lie worn every day to survive.

Nestra left the bathroom and sat on her bed.

All her adult life, she’d felt like a fraud, a failure. A stranger. She could not fit among the gleams because she wasn’t one. She wasn’t even a quirky, with part of a mana circuit that could at least make them useful in a mundane gleam job. No, she’d been a constant reminder of the possibility of downgrading, of having one’s child hopelessly incapable of equaling the parent, of an evolutionary deadend because that’s what baselines were, in a way. Dead ends unsuited to the new world. Nestra had left the family because she was a stranger in their mist. She had not fit among the baselines because she had a chip on her shoulder the size of a fucking boulder. There was a deep pain in her heart that had grown over the years, thorny tendrils reaching out to grab people to pull them in, anyone, any tribe that would say she belonged with them, any friend that would touch her shoulder and say hey, it’s ok, you’re good as you are with all your inadequacies. But that had never happened because Nestra was a ferocious bitch who’d picked a lethally dangerous job to prove something to herself. She’d bitten back and fought to prove to the world that it had been wrong to deny her her birthright. Because she was strong and hard-working. She’d battled every day to make a point and, of course, predictably, the world had not given a flying fuck. Her sword techniques plateaued. Then the mana cravings drove her forward in a race that could only end with her planted in some walls, face first. A race with no cheering crowd. Just her and the incoming bricks. Nestra realized that at some point, she’d given up. Oh, she’d made plans of course. Because just lying down and waiting to die meant the world won, that she did not deserve the gift of mana. That was unacceptable. But she’d given up on happiness. She’d just waited to die. Or rather, she’d just waited for something to kill her.

And that would have been fine with her. Death.

Really, the only problem was pain and not being eaten.

But death was ok.

And now she realized that all those years feeling like an impostor among her own, and her inability to fit in had, in fact, a very clear explanation.

She wasn’t who she thought she was.

And that was… an incredible relief.

Tears welled in her eyes, the human ones. Nestra made a gesture to rip and the mask fell off, the color dripping off her like cheap paint. The void-eyed Nestra cried tears of bitter joy and disbelief that finally, finally, after twenty-four fucking years of agony, she knew what was wrong with her. And it was not being a shit person. It was being a not-a-person trying to fit in with people. That was why it had never worked.

What a fantastic realization.

Nestra returned to the box needled by curiosity though she was feeling sleepy again. The rest of the message was pretty short. As before, the glyphs danced in her mind like old companions even though she was positive she’d never seen them before. The word for her name, Nezhra, was wrong. A phonetic rendition of Nestra. It felt strange yet welcoming.

“Quest reward: mask + Kero nut”

The mask was necessary. The nut was probably a bonus. She removed the paper to reveal a strange spherical body shaped like a kidney bean. Just like the real her, it was gray and colorless, almost silvery under a certain angle. It also smelled delicious. She popped it in her mouth and bit down.

An explosion of taste drowned her spirit, washing away all her worries in a tidal wave of flavor. The crunchy bits cracked under her teeth with a pleasant pop. This was an apotheosis of a gustative experience. It elevated her mood and her spirit.

And then, it was gone.

“Aw. Just one?”

The crumpled piece of paper didn’t reply. She decided to finish the message, despondent.

“Your next quest will be at these coordinates tomorrow night. Bring your sword!”

An extremely precise set of GPS coordinates followed. Nestra could input this in her car and get close enough, though that would leave traces. Instead, she used a map on a random website to get the right spot within the proper block. It was an automated warehouse near the wall, in district eighteen. Maybe twenty minutes away on the outer ring with no traffic. Interesting.

Should she trust the mysterious messengers? Possibly. She remembered the rooms in her mind palace. They required more blood, more sacrifice. It was clear the messenger knew what she was so it was logical it knew what she needed.

Nestra knew she couldn’t run away anymore. It had to be done.

Tomorrow.

She returned to bed and crashed down hard.

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