The Queen and Carolyn flew in low over the gentle surf, turned south down the long white beach and circled the island in a meandering arc. In the center of the remote island, a volcanic mountain rose, beckoning them towards certain doom.
"We should fly over the jungle," Carolyn said, fixating on the dense green foliage. "See if we can pick up their trails."
"No," the queen answered, staring out at sea. "The island hides many secrets. The whereabouts of intruders is but one of them."
"How do you know that?"
"I don't. She does."
Lilith's plan to become the Godlike apex being was progressing faster than anyone would believe. Many of her memories had implanted in Binky, the playful raptor's mind. But perhaps not all of them.
Somewhere over the wide expanse of water, the Queen had assured Carolyn that Dahl that Moss, Lilith and Eve had entered the lower chamber. But only two of them reached the island. The queen either could not or would not say which two made it, or why the others had not. As they flew on, trying to locate the spot where two team members came ashore, Carolyn had ample time to form her own dark conclusions. None of which helped ease her growing sense of suspicion.
Carolyn had known all four since she was a little girl. Although in this timeline, three of the four had yet to meet her. Carolyn hoped they would live long enough to meet her someday. But a sense of doubt slithered through her mind.
Furthering Carolyn's sense of impending doom was the Queen's revelation that two Necromonger contingents had arrived from the future. Although the Queen wouldn't tell Carolyn how she knew anyone had arrived or where they went. In fact, the more she shared her limited intel, the more Carolyn realized she may not have received a complete picture. As she watched the queen staring into the surf, she got the impression the Queen had little snapshots of what was going on, like someone with an old photo album that didn't belong to them. The Queen could see people and places, but didn't have the stories behind the images.
As they flew onward, searching for footprints in the virgin sand, Carolyn thought about the nameless, faceless soldiers aligning against a horde of changing raptors, 2 missing mercenaries, 2 shapeshifters- whereabouts also unknown- a stranded engineer, still topside, aboard a ship he couldn't pilot and one telepath who may, or may not, be able to read minds anymore. In a guilty, selfish way, the last worry concerned her most.
Then, much to Carolyn's growing displeasure, she recalled their earlier encounter with the Purifier and amended her enemies tally to a lethal brute squad under the control of one immortal, unstoppable timeshifter hell bent on ending all life in the universe. Oh yeah, and one last concern for her mounting heap of worry. Carolyn didn't think any of her teammates had any weapons. It was at that point; she concluded their odds of defending the obelisk from a highschool marching band armed with an assortment of homemade potato cannons was unlikely, let alone, against a band of mountain-sized killers who relished a bloody fight.
When Carolyn voiced her concerns, the Queen dismissed them with a lofty wave-off far too reminiscent of Lady Hemmingford.
"Not to worry," the Queen said.
But worry was just one of the swirling emotions racing through Carolyn's mind. Hell, without her nifty mind reading parlor trick to rely on, she was approaching a mixture of frustration, and a fair amount of terror. With no power, she was a leaf blowing in the wind.
As the Queen waved Carolyn's concerns away for the third time, Carolyn thought. Great. Another person who blows me off like I'm still a goddamn kid. She laughed at the idea of seeing the queen as a person. The Queen resembled a woman. Not quite a human woman, but she was getting there and Carolyn figured it wouldn't be long before she could pass for a human. Albeit, a tall, jet black from head to toe, leather winged wraith with three oversized digits on both feet and hands. And let's not forget the razor sharp talons.
After observing the queen's behaviors up close, Carolyn believed there may be a little of the old monster still lurking in her somewhere. She showed little emotion, and her complete lack of empathy made Carolyn believe she suffered from an unhealthy smattering of psychopathy.
The corner of the queen's mouth rose into a smirk.
Without being able to read the Queen's mind, Carolyn feared what she and her new comrades might do. How could Carolyn stop her? Or any of them? She had no chance to overpower them. The Queen was subdued in even the most stressful of situations. But Carolyn- being Carolyn- refused to say anything. As a result, the queen knew everything. Carolyn's mind was open to her.
After another ten minutes of pestering and needling passed, the Queen responded in the time-honored tradition of all annoyed parents by blaring a single word, "Because."
Carolyn turned towards her red-face blazing, fighting off the urge to blurt out the time-honored response of every stubborn child and beamed her response at the Queen. Because why? The Queen turned to her with a raised brow.
Carolyn knew the queen was leaving a lot out. But after screaming in her face, she didn't push the issue. It's a bad idea pissing off an unpredictable 7 foot tall juggernaut with unknown mental and physical powers. But the festering silence didn't stop Carolyn from glaring ahead or hunching over her ride in an angry pose, suggesting the whole goddamn situation was bullshit and she didn't like any of it.
The Queen's new persona seemed a bit too much like Lilith Hemmingford for Carolyn's liking. Sure.. Carolyn liked Lilith, but come on, one Lady Hemmingford in the universe was more than enough. Thank you very much. But as she watched the Queen. Really watched her. Carolyn didn't like what she saw. It was obvious the Queen did not just have Lilith's old photo album; she had most of Lilith's memories. Even with Carolyn's advanced knowledge of science, she did not know how that level of memory transfer could affect the mind. And that wasn't the worst of it. The Queen was exhibiting many of Lilith's behavioral traits and was looking and sounding like Lilith Hemmingford. And that was fucking nuts. Because if that was true, Lilith had done what? Turned a raptor into some skewed version of herself. And for what purpose?
When Carolyn turned to the queen, she saw her attention had become fixed on the shallow waters between the shoreline and a hundred meters offshore. Carolyn became irritated with her new teammate's preoccupation with the water. From then on, every time Carolyn looked at the Queen, she was peering out to sea rather than at the beach. Didn't she care about the lost team? Just how were they going to find anyone by looking in the opposite direction? Especially with the Queen's attention fixed on the water and Carolyn's attention fixed on the Queen. Neither woman was looking at the beach.
Carolyn suspected she already knew where the team came ashore, and this brief trip around the island was a sham. They weren't looking for footprints. They were looking for something beneath the waves. And whatever was out there, Carolyn doubted it had anything to do with Necromongers or an ancient obelisk.
Carolyn believed the Queen couldn't see the future. Even if she came from the future. The past is easy to see from the future. But seeing the future is a different story. The future has an infinite number of possibilities, each veering off into their own time-streams and each creating infinite networks of tangled branches leading into an unknowable, ever-changing kaleidoscope of possibilities. And all of it based on individual decisions, random events amid an ever changing cosmos trying to work itself out.
Every timeshifter knows going back in time is child's play. Pick a time, pick a spot, and with very little energy or effort, pop, you're there. But moving forward in time, well now, that takes a God-like power no mere mortal possesses. Not even immortals possess that level of power. To put it into perspective, to move back in time, it takes only the power of a single flickering candle. But to move forward in time, a single second takes the power of a supernova. From there on, the energy requirement increases exponentially. You get the point. Traveling ahead in time becomes problematic. For instance, to travel forward a single hour, the power requirement needed would lead to a galactic blackout. No one would survive the sudden cold snap.
As a result, humans, the ones who grow old and die, have one way of seeing the future. Live long enough to get there. But when immortal timeshifters reach the future, they can jump again and again. Moving back and living forward allows a timeshifter to nudge a time-stream in a direction they want it to go. It is a good time to address the problem with time travel and immortality. A, immortality comes with a cruel curse. Time shifters age at a slower rate. Average lifespans last hundreds of thousands of years. But no matter how much their bodies deteriorate, they never die. They created the obelisk for that reason. It mitigates the debilitating effects of repeated jumps. Before the obelisk, only one shifter ever jumped back far enough to experience the effect. Such efforts are not for the faint of heart. Ask Kearyn.
The more Carolyn thought about what the Queen said, the more she knew Lilith had broken the tenet. Making such a profound change to a time-stream was batshit crazy. It could lead to a time quake that wiped out the entire universe.
Lilith, more than most timeshifters, knew the ripple effects unchecked alterations had on every event from that point forward. Carolyn told herself she was just being paranoid. Just because she could no longer read her teammates' thoughts didn't mean Lilith was up to something sketchy. But It did, because that was no ordinary crystal Carolyn had given the queen. It had not only altered her physiology, but the physiology of every raptor the queen had come into contact with. It was at that point, Carolyn thought the crystal must have contained the instructions for some kind of contagious retrovirus. A retrovirus targeting raptors.
Carolyn fixated on the queen, who fixated on the sea. She concentrated with all the force of will she could muster, trying to bore a hole into the back of the Queen's skull. She needed to know what the Queen was thinking. After a few moments, a massive shockwave slammed into her as if someone had dropped a mental brick wall on her. The invisible barrier almost knocked Carolyn off her ride. The world spun as she grabbed her forehead, leaned out to one side, and projectile vomited into the surf. Her ride let out a disgusted grunt, veered away hard from the spreading shower threatening to coat its side, and then righted itself before Carolyn fell off and ate a mouthful of sand.
The Queen's ride, surprised by its comrade's incursion into its airspace, faltered and the queen signaled the two raptors to go lower. The raptors descended, skimming the surface of the water with the tips of their magnificent wings. She realized the creature she was riding was not the creature she had crawled on. Hell, in the past hour alone, the two once gigantic raptors that had borne them aloft with ease now struggled to stay in the air at all. The once graceful raptors had undergone dramatic physical and mental changes during the flight down. And as Carolyn stared down at their forever changed features, she wondered what they were becoming. The thought sent a chill up Carolyn's spine. These strangely familiar creatures weren't raptors anymore, or winged humans like the queen. They looked like winged xenomorphs. Then she realized why she knew they were familiar. They looked like winged versions of Eve and Lilith.
When Carolyn arrived on M6-117, she had come with a simple plan. But whatever this shit-show was, it was not to plan. Everything was going awry.
Until that moment, Carolyn had forgotten the jump that brought her to M6-117. Before the time-shift, Necromongers attacked the Sheong Ja, a liberated basilica class frigate. How the Necros found them in the forbidden planets region was a mystery to her. During the battle, Kearyn sent her back before the Necros could prevent the time shift.
Carolyn was certain of nothing. The intel they had sent her with wasn't worth shit. But with a lot of luck, she might still salvage the mission. Or at least, get out alive.
Lilith had twisted the time stream, risking everything for her dark plan. The Purifier must have been giddy with joy when he learned that. But maybe not. Perhaps Lilith's betrayal had always been the plan. What if they were in a time loop? Maybe there wasn't one paradox; maybe there were millions.
It was all conjecture at that point, and now Carolyn had a bitch of a headache. And trying to read the queen's thoughts was out. That had ended the same as when she tried to read Lady Hemmingford. And thank God, Carolyn had only tried that once. It ended up with a week-long migraine and a seared esophagus from puking up her boots.
Carolyn watched the queen sitting on her ride, saw trouble coming on fast and this queen is not the queen Kearyn sent me to rescue. This queen could pass for a woman. A large, beautiful, very human woman. And thanks to Lilith's betrayal, they were all about to have a sizable chunk of flesh removed from their asses.
There was no time to counter Lilith's plan. And Carolyn couldn't make a time jump without Kearyn or Lilith's help. She laughed, thinking asking the Purifier was out of the question. Her entire team had gone MIA. So, until someone came forward or backward in time to put this shit right, she'd have to do her best to keep this degenerating timeline intact until someone could repair it before they all blinked out of existence, or worse.
Carolyn looked down the beach, spied something bobbing up and down in the surf and thought it was a tangle of driftwood. She couldn't be sure. Apparently, seeing half a kilometer ahead wasn't her gift, either. "What's that?" she asked, pointing at the object in the distance. No one answered. The Queen was busy looking out to sea again and their steeds were busy ignoring her. Another bad sign.
"Hey," Carolyn shouted. "Are you even listening?"
The Queen turned a frustrated gaze towards the object in the distance, squinted and said, "It's a raft. Not very large. Hardly big enough for two." She leaned forward, whispered something to her ride, and then sat up again. "They went inland somewhere around there. There are tracks leading into the jungle."
"You can see their tracks from here?"
"No," she replied, gesturing at her ride. "He can. We'll touch down near the raft and follow their tracks inland from there. We can't fly over the jungle canopy. The foliage is too dense. It's foot power from there."
The Queen's ride faltered and dropped 5 feet in an instant. A deluge of water covered Carolyn as its smooth belly struck the surf. The raptor flapped its smaller wings hard, sprayed water everywhere and came up even with Carolyn. "Besides," the Queen added matter-of-factly, "Our rides have reached the limits of their endurance." She leaned forward and said in a clear voice, "Take us in. We will shelter there before we head inland."
"We can't wait. What if they need help now?"
The raptor looked over its shoulder and the Queen said, "And yet, we will." Before Carolyn could protest, she added, "We are not one hundred percent. Entering close combat before we are ready will place us all in danger."
Carolyn glared at her.
After landing in front of the raft, the two women slid off their rides. Well, Carolyn slid off. The Queen stood up and walked away, leaving her behind with their exhausted, panting rides. That's when Carolyn got a real close look at how much the rides had transformed. Her situation had changed, and perhaps not for the better.
Carolyn watched her walk away as the two raptors stood up and up and up behind her. Standing beside them, she felt quite tiny and without her mind control tricks to protect herself, quite vulnerable, indeed.
Thanks to Lilith's meddling, these new and much improved raptors were no longer slaves to their primitive minds, or Carolyn's advanced mind. Carolyn could no longer read these new creatures, let alone hope to control their actions. From a cognitive standpoint, these beings had grown beyond her gifts. Perhaps even beyond human minds. She wondered if they could read her thoughts, but didn't think so. She hoped not. But standing on the beach with two giant unreadable raptors made her feel at their mercy. A growing sense of vulnerability swept over her. It was not a feeling she enjoyed, but it was a feeling she had created.
Carolyn hadn't expected the plan would strip her of the telepathic gifts. But in the end, the silence in her head had emphasized how much she relied on her telepathy. Because without it, she didn't know who she was anymore. In the simplest terms, she felt outside of everything and everyone for the first time in her life. And that emptiness led to an inexplicable loneliness she could not fathom. How did normal people do it? Trapped inside their own heads day and night for their entire lives. The idea terrified her.
She had wished for silence a thousand times, and now it was here. She wanted her power back. Standing amid a race of beings immune to her charms, she became the lesser of the group, and if she was going to go with them, her survival might very well depend on their willingness to protect her. Carolyn wondered how the raptors viewed being uplifted without first being asked? Not that she could have asked them, she did not know Lilith's gift would affect them. But like a good little soldier, she did as ordered.
She turned away from the two raptors when she saw them staring at her as if she were an unwanted outsider. They weren't staring. Not really. They didn't care enough to stare. But Carolyn's suspicion was right. She would always be an outsider. It didn't matter what the raptor would come to look like or how intelligent they became. The simple fact was they would never be human or see humans as their equals. And that was the real problem when playing God. Sometimes your creations can get away from you. And sometimes, when you don't consider their needs as much as your own, they should.
The queen stood at the edge of the waves, three-toed feet soaking in the cool clear water, looking at her inhuman hands. She peered out at the water at what Carolyn presumed was nothing. She was wrong. Something was aware they were on the beach. And it watched them with growing intent.
"Hey." Carolyn said. "We need to find our team and get to the obelisk before the Necros do."
"Your team," the Queen replied, turning to Carolyn with a dark sneer. "Does not know what they have unleashed on this galaxy. But at least this time, you have cursed your own kind, as well as mine." She shook her head. "Your kind fumble about like toddlers juggling nukes, thinking you can control the destinies of an entire universe while unable to control your own paths."
Carolyn could see excruciating pain on her face.
"Fools." the Queen said, gesturing at a dark object floating out in the gentle waves. "Even her. Especially her." The Queen reeled on Carolyn. "Even your precious Kearyn fools with powers he cannot control. The whole damn lot of you are fools. None of you care about my people? We have always been fodder in a war that stretches across the expanse of time and space? When have any of you cared for more than yourselves? And now. Here You Come Again, using my people as your puppets." She reeled on Carolyn. "Not this time. Your kind has gone too far." She turned to Carolyn with a dark smile. "Because now is the time to meet our fates together."
And with that, Carolyn knew the Queen knew everything that was happening and that Lilith had indeed done something terrible. "How-"
"The bitch had no right," the Queen shouted, cutting Carolyn off as she threw up a disturbing bird gesture with a giant three finger hand. "Pardon me. What I meant to say was that I had no right."
"You had no right?"
"This is not who I am supposed to be, you selfish bitch." she raged, reeling on Carolyn, causing her to stumble backwards and fall on her backside. "Your selfish benefactor has so corrupted this timeline that I doubt that even the Champion can un-fuck it now. She does not know what she has done." The Queen fell silent and Carolyn waited for the gears grinding in her head to mesh the jumbled up thoughts taking her away. "The conniving shit did this on purpose. Lilith thinks fate and time preordained this nonsense." She let out a monstrous laugh. "And now, no one can change this timeline."
"It's never too late." Carolyn said, shaking her head doubtfully. "Someone can come back and prevent her from doing whatever she did. We can reset this timeline."
"Oh, Lilith did something far more detrimental than altering this timeline. She has allied herself with our adversary to create an unbreakable paradox. And if we or anyone else attempts to alter that paradox, we're all going to blink out of existence. Game over, little girl." She shook her head in disgust."The cleaver little fucker tricked us both and now we're all in for the long game."
"Who did?"
"The Purifier. Or maybe Kearyn," she answered. "Does it matter? Aren't they the same?"
"I don't understand."
"Oh course you don't. Your grandfather has taught you nothing about your people, has he?"
"He taught me everything."
"Did he?" The Queen asked with a glimmer of doubt in her eye. "Where do your people come from? You should know that much. Everybody comes from somewhere." But Carolyn didn't know. She had never asked, and Kearyn volunteered the information. "No. No idea. Let me explain." The Queen gestured at the not-raptors over her shoulder and said, "You come from us. We are your people. Or should I say, we are half of your people. The better half, I imagine. Certainly the stronger half."
"That's not possible."
"Oh… Why is that? Are you too good to come from us?"
"It's not possible. Because we evolved on Earth."
"You are the single most infuriating little woman I have ever met."
"I am the only woman you have ever met," Carolyn snapped in return.
"Too right you are. But allow me to enlighten you on a pertinent need to know detail your grandfather omitted from your education. It's about a battle that takes place in the future." The Queen paused, not wanting to give too much away. "The place isn't important. It's more about what happened that matters. It's the battle where the Purifier becomes Kearyn."
"Just tell me how to stop this."
"And have you run back and tell your meddling comrades so you can kill us all when you try to change the outcome of that battle? I think not. Just know, the defining moment will happen soon. In celestial terms, it will happen in the blink of an eye."
"Then why tell me anything at all?"
The queen nodded and said, "During that battle, one of your ancestors- arguably the oldest- is flung back in time. It is that single event that solidifies the first paradox and leads to the creation of all other paradoxes from that point forward."
"There are other paradoxes?"
"There are three. Combined, they are the paradoxes of fathers and sons. And they are why fucking with the time is a bad idea. When your ancestor arrived in the past. Clinging to life, burned to a crisp and broken beyond repair, he believed he had escaped his fate. But he was wrong. Fate, as it seems, had one last use for him. And so, too, did the greatest evil ever created. His misery had just begun."
"Can you tell me where he went?"
"He went home. Back to a people he never knew existed. And that was the first time he and I met. Although, I did not look like this back then."
"You met Kearyn as Lilith?"
"When she was young. It was I who nursed him back to health. Of course, I didn't know who he was or anything about the paradoxes. I did not know the long future that lay ahead of me or the longer past. Back then, I was a naive girl.. And so, like my people, I listened to his stories with a mixture of awe and terror. I wanted to help. I'm sure you have noticed he can be a very persuasive speaker when he wants to be." She paused and flexed her hands. "That, and he was kind to me. Back then, he was very kind."
"How did you help?"
"He convinced me to enlist the help of those closest to me, and I did so willingly. Some joined the cause out of fealty to me. Others joined for their own selfish reasons. Either way, my people wanted to prevent the coming disasters he spoke of. So, we helped. Myself, my sister and our husbands convinced the rest of our people to spread out through the cosmos in search of life and bring back as many DNA samples as possible. There, we sifted through the greatest traits of every predator imaginable and created an apex species for one purpose." She turned to Carolyn and asked, "Care to guess which species we created?"
Carolyn's mouth fell open.
"It is not every day one can create one's own self. But this monumental fuck up..." The Queen paused just long enough to gesture at herself. "Seems to have led us to a fourth paradox. You could call this one the mother of paradoxes."
"What are you talking about?"
"Isn't it obvious, Lady Hemmingford made sure raptors are immortal? Like Phoenixes, we rise from the desiccated remains of our fallen dead. We fight, we kill, we feed, only to rise again and start the cycle all over. Ironic how Lilith engineered my raptor self billions of years ago, intending to steal my physical prowess later."
"She stole you."
"Or more aptly, she stole herself." Carolyn said nothing. "Do you think it's a coincidence she chose me? Out of the millions of my kin scurrying around in the dark, do you believe she altered the first raptor she came upon?"
"I don't know how she did this to you," Carolyn replied, refusing to make eye contact.
"You know, there is no mind shard capable of doing this to me."
Carolyn nodded.
"There is only one plausible explanation for my sudden transformation. Lilith created me to become this. She placed her DNA in me when she created me. And as my body transforms, it gives off pheromones, signaling my kin to transform. She created an unstoppable army and set herself up as queen."
"She wouldn't do that."
"The only thing I can say for certain is that I am the 17-year-old girl who engineered a raptor to become herself."
"Are you saying you created yourself?"
"I think it's fair to say there were many hands involved in my creation. But yes."
"That's not possible. No creature can undergo that much genetic rewriting and survive. It would tear it apart."
"Agreed." the Queen responded. "That is why the genetic manipulation to get us to this point was damn clever. But then again, she was always too clever for her own good. All science and no empathy make Jane a very dangerous girl."
"You can't stop it?"
"I didn't know I was doing anything until the three faces of Lilith combined to create an unbreakable paradox. And now, there is no way to tell who came first. The human; the raptor or the hybrid."
"There must be a way to reverse it?"
"Perhaps. If you can pinpoint the exact moment that created the paradox. You might have a chance of reversing it. I'd give you 500 quintillion to 1 odds. But even those odds seem optimistic. The problem is the paradox is a perfect circle of upright dominos with no discernible beginning or end. It is and always has been. Who can say who created who first? The variables in the equation leading us here are unquantifiable. And if any of your little friends go poking at it. The whole damn thing will collapse, and we're all dead."
"Why am I dead?"
The Queen turned to her comrades, gestured in their direction, and said something that drew a shiver up Carolyn's spine. "Had I known then what I know now, I would have killed myself and averted the coming disaster." When she saw Carolyn gaping at her in shock, she added, "Sorry. I can be a tad too melodramatic. I suppose it is a byproduct of living multiple lives and remembering them all at once."
Carolyn was going to ask her how that was possible, but remembered what the Queen had looked like earlier.
"The funny thing is, since time began, I have existed as three different creatures. Each with their own unique stories, languages and lives. And until this very moment, I didn't remember any of them."
"How's that possible?"
"We are getting close to the obelisk. I think it's acting like a nexus in space/time. I can see all three of my lives as if happening. It makes me wish to God, I would just leave things alone? And it's making me want to puke." She turned to the sea, threw up another bloody bird and yelled an unfamiliar expletive. Carolyn didn't need to know the language, or read minds, to understand the sentiment. Rage.
The Queen gaped at her trembling bloody hand. Three black talons lay on the sand. Blood dripped from the exposed raw meat. The two outer fingers erupted down the center, and where there had been a hand with three fingers moments earlier, there were five transforming fingers now. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there were the beginnings of five fingers. The Queen winced and Carolyn looked away. What was happening to the Queen's hands and feet, and whole body, was Carolyn's doing.
Carolyn's stomach rolled, and she looked away. This woman's suffering- all the raptors suffering- was her fault. She had helped do this to them all and hadn't thought about the consequences. She had been a good little soldier following orders. All science makes Carolyn a very dangerous girl, indeed.
Blood pooled around the Queen's feet and the gentle waves drew the coppery bloom out to sea. In the near distance, the thing watching from below the waves flicked its massive tail and floated towards the red waves like a drifting torpedo, approaching an unsuspecting ship. The Queen didn't see it. Pain consumed the ends of her searing limbs.