2.28.41 - 
Forza Ninetails
The rickety recon helicopter shook violently, and every shudder sent a fresh wave of pain radiating outward from my abdomen. I was flat on my back on the gurney they'd strapped me to before liftoff, staring up at the rattling ceiling. One of the medical techs had a bag of blood held up over me, the line running down into the crook of my arm. I could feel the cuff tight around my bicep, the pulse oximeter clipped to my finger, the slow cold drip of something else they'd put in the IV that was supposed to keep me calm, but I couldn’t tell if it was working.
My bare, swollen feet extended past the end of the gurney. Through the open side door of the cabin I could see the dark landscape skimming past below us, still buried in shadow. Dawn was beginning to bleed through at the horizon, red and orange, the color of something wounded. I watched it without really seeing it.
I kept thinking about Kiara. The way she moved. The way she fought. Not like a soldier following a doctrine, but like something older and more wild than that, something that had been burning in her long before anyone gave it a name. I knew that feeling. I'd spent years trying to convince myself I was the only one who did.
I thought it was just me.
That was the part I couldn’t let go of. The 
Jethro infection, the Shard, whatever he called it in my nightmares, I’d carried it like a private damnation for so long that finding it in someone else wasn’t a relief. It was a door opening onto a room I couldn’t face. Where did it come from? How many more of us were out there, walking around with this fire in our blood? The voices spoke of it like something ancient, with its own agenda. If I let it in, would it give me the answers it gave Kiara? The thought was a poison. I knew what that would open me up to… what I’d done. What I might still do.
My eyes drifted over to the tech as he adjusted the blood bag and checked the line without a word. The helicopter shook again. I closed my eyes.
As we banked toward the hanger I turned my head and caught sight of 
Shiinx through the open door, standing apart from the other medical responders beside a second gurney, her arms crossed tight against her chest. Even from here I could read the worry in the set of her shoulders. The sight of her steadied something in me that the IV couldn't touch. Without her standing there, arms crossed, looking like she's already calculating how badly I've messed myself up, I think I'd lose track of which parts of me are still worth keeping. Without her, I'm not sure how much of myself would be left to come back to. Kiara mentioned something about how she was unsure why I was able to resist Jethro’s call so well. Wasn’t it just because of Shiinx and her keeping me grounded? That’s all that it seemed to be, right? Did Jethro tell her something else?
The helicopter’s skids scraped the deck as it touched down, and instantly the medics were moving me, rolling the gurney out onto the waiting tarmac. My legs buckled as I lay back, every inch of my torso slick with blood that pooled beneath me and dripped onto the cold metal surface. Shiinx barreled forward, her face twisted in fear. I weakly lifted an arm to ward her off, but she fell against me, crushing my abdomen in a fierce embrace. Pain lanced through me as her tears soaked into my fur.
She buried her muzzle in my neck, trembling. “I was so scared, Forza. I thought I’d lost you.”
My heart thundered. I forced myself to steady her, but panic churned beneath my ribs. Everything was wrong, and I was barely holding on.
Gently, Shiinx eased back and covered my hand, still clutching my abdominal wounds, with her own. “How bad is it? Let me see.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t,” I rasped. She nodded.
One medic pressed down on a strap. The other checked my vitals. “Sir, we need to get you moving,” the first said.
I tried to groan but only a wet rasp came out. They secured my arms and legs, then lifted the gurney’s handles.
As they rolled me toward the ramp, Shiinx fell into step at my side. Her eyes never left my face. “Forza, what happened out there?” she pressed.
I blinked against the blur of lights. My other hand went to my forehead, slick with sweat and blood. “We were ambushed by…” My throat tightened.
“Did the Sun Jin find you?”
“No. It was,” I paused. “A Templar woman.”
Shiinx froze. “A woman? From the crash?”
I shook my head. “No, she attacked … She caused the crash.”
A medic murmured, “He’s lost a lot of blood, ma’am. We need to get him to medbay,”
Shiinx cut in, voice firm. “Do it.”
Another idea hit me, urgent. I tried to lift my head. A medic’s hand on my chest held me down. “Shiinx, listen.”
She leaned close. “What is it?”
“Get on the comm now. Tell Colonel 
Ukatan our cover’s blown.”
She missed a step, paused, a confused look on her face. “How? What happened?”
Her jaw clenched. “I’ll call him.” She drew in a shaky breath as we neared the medical bay doors. “Forza, I have to do this now.”
I forced a nod against the pain. “Don’t worry about me. Come find me once it’s done. Tell me what he says.”
Her hand tightened around mine. “I will. And remember the protocol, you don’t exist. Stay safe.”
She pulled back as the doors slid open, and the sterile light swallowed her whole. The gurney carried me into the medbay’s heart. It was the right call, the only call. I just had to hold on until she came back. I heal fast. It’s ‘in my blood.’ She knew that. She’d remember.
—
The clock on the wall read the same time it had read the last time I looked at it, or close enough that it didn’t matter. Half an hour or so. I let my head fall back and stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t slept all that much before the mission and whatever they had running into my arm through the IV wasn’t doing anything for that, just turning the edges of the room soft and unreliable. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sleep or was afraid to.
Through the hanging IV bag, I watched Shiinx slip through the door into the white room beyond. One of the doctors intercepted her before she’d taken three steps, leaning in close to say something I couldn’t hear. I watched her face for the whole of it, trying to read her from across the room, my pulse doing things the monitor beside me was probably not happy about. Then she looked over at me and her expression broke into a smile. That helped a bit.
“Everything okay?” I asked when she reached me.
“Botched surgery jokes,” she said, the corner of her mouth pulling up.
Something loosened in my chest. I laughed, or tried to; it came out thin and a little broken, but it was real.
“What did the doctor actually say?”
She settled into the chair at my side. “Emergency surgery. He said you should be fine.” She paused. “He also said he was surprised you made it back at all. On foot from the crash site, then the flight, in that condition.”
“Yeah. He said the same” I already knew that part. “Ukatan?”
Her hand tightened around mine. “We’re pulling everything. Destroying the records, packing up.”
“Evacuation.”
“Too much risk. We have to abandon base.” She watched me. “It’s not your fault, Forza.”
I closed my eyes. “Still… sorry.”
She reached up and pushed the hair back from my forehead, just once, the way she sometimes did when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. “We’ve done this before. Just never quite like this.” A beat of quiet settled between us. “I’m sorry about Raf and Chambers.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that. I thought about it anyway, the particular arithmetic of it, the fact that it wasn’t me. I put it somewhere I wasn’t going to look at right now.
“Are you okay?” Her thumb moved across my knuckles.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just thinking.”
She leaned in and tapped my forehead gently with her feline fingertip, concern threading through her voice. “I’m talking about up here. You seem… different.”
My breath caught. Every pulse pounded with doubt. “The Templar woman, Kiara… she’s like me. She has it too.” Fear and strange sympathy twisted in my gut. How could I dread her power and mourn her fate at once? “The waking in cold sheets. The way a shadow in the wrong place can stop your heart.” My hands shook a bit, maybe from bloodloss.
Shiinx’s green eyes softened, but I could almost see her flinch at my confession.
“I think it’s worse for her,” I swallowed hard. Relief I wasn’t alone clashed with guilt that I was so broken. “I don’t remember how it started for me, but with her… it’s like facing my own darkness.” I ran a hand through my hair. “This 
Bloodtiger energy… I wish you could see who I was before. All I see now is 
Caisteal. Snow. Cold.”
Shiinx rested her chin on the bed’s railing, watching me with quiet intensity. “Any other memories? Before Tier?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Just snow and trees… distant lights. Certain scents turn my stomach. And Rio… I see once in a while, holding me as if she’s afraid I’ll vanish.” My voice cracked under the weight of longing and shame.
A wry chuckle tugged at Shiinx’s lips. “Yeah, her.”
I darted a glance at her, unsure whether to be grateful or wounded by her tone. I knew she was joking though, she never hit me as the jealous type. “She was there for me.” I leaned closer. “Right after I escaped. I can’t explain what it was like, but she was there. It’s the only good memory I have. Rio’s face, the snow, a farming village.”
Images flickered behind my lids. The not-good memories. Bodies strewn across snow. A farmer charging me with a simple knife where I made a simple side-step, a twitch of the wrist, and the front of his Caistealian face fell off beneath red sunset. I took a big breath trying to bury the replay in my mind.
Shiinx nodded, fierce compassion shining in her eyes. “I get it. I hope Rio helped you. We’ll figure this out, hon.”
I turned my head, vision blurring from the drugs. A vision of charging a Caistealian man, two swords in his upright chest and his impaled body being lifted into the air before the two swords were ripped in opposite directions - his body tearing apart in crimson light. Stop. Stop. Stop. Letting this overtake me will only lead to ruin.
“Commander,” a doctor’s voice called from somewhere in the room.
Shiinx stiffened, listening. Our hands squeezed one last time. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered, rising.
"Alright," I replied as I looked back at her to see where she was going... wait what the fuck? It was him, the... other me. The dark half of myself, stood before me in all its terrifying glory. The far corner of the room rotted in crawling darkness, tendrils snaking across the walls like a hungry beast. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and a sudden panic filled my lungs. It was like looking into a distorted mirror of my own twisted soul, and the ringing in my ears grew deafening as the sound of actual large bells filled the atmosphere and I could feel the ground shake under us as it flew at me. The light around him grayed, washed out, and distorted by his dark aura. Absolute panic. The red. The black feathers. It was me. His features blacked out except those red glowing eyes.
The gurney flipped, hurling me to the tile with a bone-shaking crash. All light died but for the sputtering red emergency strobes, which were instantly swallowed by his presence. Cold claws raked my neck and arm, pinning me to the wall. He slammed me against it over and over, each blow a battering ram. Pain flared from my spine to my skull; I choked on fear as I heard tiles cracking. My fingers scrabbled at his talons, useless. This wasn’t a nightmare anymore, it was flesh and bone.
The bells grew louder. His head, a twisted mirror image of my own, with eyes glowing with bloodlust and hunger, loomed closer and closer to mine. The unnatural feather-laden crest in place of normal 
Amber Krowen hair swept up and back over the top of his head. I desperately tried to push him away, my feet against his abdomen, but his strength was unimaginable. With a tilt of his head, he sank his fangs into my neck, tearing through flesh with ease. He was butcher… and I was bone.
White. Then red. The blood spray painted the walls red. My throat was full, drowning me from the inside, each cough a wet detonation that painted the tile. This was a reminder that this is what happens when I dwell on the past. When I mistakenly give just an ounce of excessive focus on the darkness or try to figure out where it came from. Jethro.
My arms were suddenly stripped of their warmth. I opened them, my eyes, slowly, and I saw soldiers from the 
Sun Jin Empire advancing towards me. I heard the clattering of their drawn rifles. My body was frozen with fear as I realized they were 
Bethians, the feline race that inhabited the Sun Jin capital planet of 
Bethany. But these soldiers were different, wearing armor that reminded me of the facility on Caisteal where everything went wrong.
Enraged, I snatched up the blazing orange Templar sword from the nearby table. I lunged into the throng of soldiers, a powerful horizontal swing that tore through their ranks. Their rifles were no match for my weapon, shattering like twigs and blood spewed from the open gashes of their armor. The blood sprayed in all directions as I charged forward. Clad in the impenetrable 
Gotanenks Armor , I was a force of destruction, my enemies nothing but mere insects beneath my feet. As they futilely fired upon me, their bullets ricocheted off an invisible shield with cascades of green sparks. But it was all meaningless to me. My only objective was to annihilate every last one of them. In my left hand, I brandished the other sword. The pair once wielded by Kaisara herself. I relished in the thrill of battle as I continued my merciless onslaught. They would all pay for standing against me. I pulled them in - nowhere to hide now.
I drove a knife into a soldier’s shoulder, rolled clear, and plunged into the metal-lined hallway—the thick black hood tumbling forward over my face, the gold-trimmed fabric dark enough to swallow the blood spray whole. I hit the wall hard, a few feet off the ground, and drove the claws of one hand into the steel, holding myself there, suspended, coiled. I am the secret.
Three more figures came pounding down the hall. The knives slid between my fingers with a mechanical click, cold and familiar as teeth. I shoved off the wall—one beat of the alarm—and the air split open around me. The knives left my hands before I landed. Two of them dropped without a sound. The third hit the floor on his knees, clawing at his chest. I watched him go down. I am the answer.
One more soldier, this one afraid. He broke and ran. I let him get three steps. A Dragon Fang, a flying heavy dart, unlatched from my hip with a sound like a cracking knuckle, and flew up near the side of my cowled head and hovered with an animalistic ringing sound. I didn’t reach for it, didn’t aim, just wanted him down—and the thought alone sent it screaming after him. The impact traveled back through the Spinal System like a vibration in a wire. He went down hard. I opened my eyes. I am the end.
More and more of them. The swift unnatural dances of blade and gymnastics, cutting them down. And more. Bullet fire. An explosion off in another area. A smashing thrust of my sword in one’s chest and his head came close to mine, blood coughing onto my face. I pulled you in - prepare to die now. I kicked him off.
I will fix this. I will fix everything. I will end this cycle of pain for everybody.
Give me your soul. Give me your hate. In my world you will create.
Give me your terror. Give me your shame. You will destroy in my name.
My chin rose with the familiar sound of the station's defense system ringing in my ears matching pace with the deep orchestral bells. I bolted down the narrow corridor, each stride sending up a storm of black feathers from the grimy floor. They whipped around me, slicing the stale air with their silent mockery. My heart pounded, the rush of power already ebbing, leaving raw panic in its wake. Ahead, a Sun Jin soldier cowered against the bulkhead. I charged, driven by a feral thrill, but felt myself slipping. My claws weren’t real.
The black feathers.
I skidded to my knees, breath ragged, as the feathers spilled in a drifting tide. Desperation clawed at my skull. In a frantic haze I swept handful after handful into trembling fists, as if hoarding them could trap the madness. “Stay away,” I hissed at the shadows. “This is my power!” But the brittle shards sifted through my fingers, dancing on an unseen draft. The alarm gnawed louder, its ruthless rhythm tethering me to the fevered moment.
Pain blossomed behind my eyes. Tears slid down my face between blades of hairy fur. If I could gather every feather, maybe I could cage the nightmare. Maybe I could keep the beast from clawing back in. But red strobed lights, the alarms, Jethro’s bells. This corridor I was in stretched on. This mockery of combat would be endless and indifferent, no matter how good it felt to bring down those that would harm me.
On my knees, my twin sat behind me, settled in, and comfortable. Back to back, both of us heaving. The back of my skull met his with a dull knock and I let it rest there, jaw clenched, hands still shaking. Black feathers. Blood on my face. The bells. I pressed my eyes shut and forced air through my nose until the ringing faded. Jethro. His name sat in my chest like a thorn. I pinched my palms until my claws bit red, breathing through the roar until the bells receded, until the world tilted and I realized: this carnage, these feathers, this electric sting of power… None of it was real.
My chest lurched, relief and dread arriving at the same moment, indistinguishable from each other. The beast was still there, just below the surface, coiled and hot and patient. My hands were shaking. The feathers were gone. The bells were gone. I was tumbling awake from the high I never wanted, back from the edge of whatever beast lived in my blood, and into the cold truth that it had only been a dream.
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