thin yellow glow around the edges of her hand. The same color as the protective bubble, it ran down her entire body. It shielded her from the acidic water and gave her a supply of oxygen so she didn’t suffocate in the carbon- dioxide-rich atmosphere.
“You’re doing this so I can come with you? Why?”
Moni understood the answer the moment she asked the question. After all she had done, especially to Sneed, and those three officers, Moni had worn out her welcome in her land. Mariella’s people offered Moni asylum in their home because of all she had sacrificed in helping them.
“I love being with you, baby. But I can’t live in a bubble forever. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not eating that toothpaste-looking gunk in the lagoon. Hell no.”
They didn’t intend that she would. Those were only the seeds. The full-grown version would appear more appetizing-with a few changes in her digestive system.
“What kind of changes you talking about?”
Mariella tugged on her hand and led her deeper into the lagoon. Moni fought the urge to swim as they waded so deep that her head dipped underwater. If the bubble let her breathe in the hostile atmosphere, she would last in the transformed water too, she realized.
The lagoon had become entirely alien. Gators adorned with metal plates sifted their massive jaws through the sand until they found the deposits of sulfur they were searching for. She no longer feared them. They had been on her side the whole time. The dolphins with human arms darted around carrying slabs of metal, or large stones. They deposited them into the great worm, which would occasionally spit out a half-metal, half-biological machine. Moni spotted many glowing purple eyes inside those lumbering contraptions. She remembered her vision of the alien home world. Those were their buildings and cars all in one.
“Are they here, Mariella? Did we resurrect your people?”
Mariella grinned like a proud mother hen. Moni realized that the girl hadn’t gone up for air. She breathed as well in the acidic water as the mutated creatures did. Her jaw seized up with dread. The pressure faded as she realized that this represented freedom for Mariella and her kind. She had been out of place among humans, just as Moni had been. Now they were both home. And they had a whole litter of children waiting for them.
Her companion called it a nursery, but Moni thought it looked more like a large transparent stomach with squiggly things swimming inside. Connected to the great worm by a tube, the alien womb swayed through the water with the ghostly grace of a jelly fish. The beings inside were aquatic creatures for sure, but unlike anything in earth’s oceans. Each of them smaller than Moni’s hand, they had well-defined spinal columns-and not just one. Four backbones extended out in opposite directions from a central body with a heavily armored cranium. Each of the spines had a matching set of dozens of appendages attached. The limbs on the ends resembled paddles while the others grew bony pointers, and flexible tentacles. As they gestate over the next week, they would grow slightly larger than the average human head and their hundreds of tiny “fingers” would blossom. The ambassadors would release them when the environmental conditions matched their home world exactly and the food supply became plentiful.
“So while they’re seedlings, you’re still in charge,” Moni said inside her airtight bubble. Mariella gazed at her as if she could hear her voice-not that she needed to. “What happens when they come out? They don’t know me or anybody on earth. What will they think of me?”
It wouldn’t make a difference. She would join them before the master species awakens. That’s how Mariella would protect her.
“Everything you’ve told me about how the lagoon is all your kind wants, that’s coming from you, not them. What if they wake up, look at this big planet and still want more?”
Mariella answered by reaching through the bubble, taking Moni’s hand and showing her. She cast away the barrier that had separated Moni from the alien species’ consciousness. She immediately detected so many more of them. They were thickening inside the narrow vein of the lagoon like a blood clot. The resourceful worm had 31 embryo pods growing with seven babies inside each of them. Their Garden of Eden wouldn’t have an Adam and Eve. It would have a small community. She tried peering into their thoughts, but she couldn’t read them. Even compared to gators, birds and fish, their minds were so far outside her comprehension. She couldn’t detect the most basic of emotions from them.
Moni wondered whether the aliens were so young that they didn’t have clear thoughts or feelings. Mariella didn’t answer. She understood anyway. Only if she joined them physically and mentally, would she understand the beings from across the galaxy. Without that link, she couldn’t protect Mariella from her masters. Once the aliens got on their feet-or flippers, or tentacles, or whatever they had-they wouldn’t need the hosts. They might use some mutated animals that excelled at physical labor, but they wouldn’t need an independent brain in a tiny body like Mariella’s.
Before Moni could ask, Mariella reached into her own mouth and extracted a smooth purple marble. The ambassadors inside this “tablet” had been ordered to adapt a human body to the alien environment and connect its brain to the neural network, but without voiding its independent thought. Since Moni had become her friend and guardian, Mariella couldn’t throw away the soul that made her so special.
Moni gazed at the smooth violet marble her child dangled before her as if it were a crystal ball. She could join their family. She and Mariella could become inseparable-a bond in mind and body in consummation of their love.
And yet, Moni wondered why she found love in this alien consciousness implanted through tiny robots into a girl. Why couldn’t she love a real human being? So many of them had hurt her, and betrayed her, but Aaron hadn’t. Even after she killed four police officers, and left two people to die in her backyard, he had helped her save Mariella. She thanked him by leaving him trapped on the beachside. She should…
No, she shouldn’t. Moni realized that people only respected her when they feared her. The police badge had given her so much power, and masked her vulnerabilities, but it didn’t faze people like Sneed, Darren or her father. Aaron only helped her reach the lagoon because she had a new badge, one in the form of a girl who crushes minds. The people out there, even those who she thought loved her, would pick her apart unless she transformed into something stronger. The spirit inside Moni shined too bright for a flimsy, inferior human body.
She plucked the purple marble from Mariella’s hand and swallowed it. Moni expected that it would plop down into her stomach. Instead, it dissolved inside her throat. Everywhere the pieces spread, they swept a stinging jolt through her body. Her lungs seized up and swelled with fluid. She started suffocating. Moni clenched her throat. Her stomach cringed and contorted violently while the intestines below it began recoiling into new configurations like a bed of snakes. Even without a visible cut, she felt her blood rushing from her body. Her arms and legs became so scrawny and dehydrated that they numbed over. Ever so slowly, they were inflated with watered-down blood that required rapid pumping from her heart to circulate through her body. Before she could adjust, Moni’s flesh burned. She started scratching at herself violently. Her skin shed off in flaky lumps. From underneath, a new layer of skin arose that matched her complexion perfectly, but it felt thick and rubbery. It took a few minutes before she could distinguish her own flesh from a bodysuit, and actually feel through it with her nerves. When she did, Moni felt wet. The bubble had been removed. She hacked and coughed the water out of her lungs. Then it hit her. The liquid in her lungs wasn’t drowning her. It sustained her.
The acidic water seared off her clothes, leaving only her slowly decaying boots, but it lathered her new skin like warm bathwater. Moni held her palm before her face. She didn’t see the reflection of a purple glow from her eyes. She controlled her movements and thoughts. They had accepted her.
“Can you hear me, Mariella?”
“Of course I can. You’re with your family now, mommy.” The girl smiled as her mental message rang clearly inside Moni’s head. The connection ran both ways equally. She clearly differentiated Mariella’s thoughts from her own and she could access the girl’s memories as easily as pulling up files on a computer. She zoomed back to when they first met and saw through the girl’s perspective as the black policewoman in the muddy uniform scooped her out of the mangroves and whisked her past a hostile detective Sneed.
Moni felt an odd parallel. This time, Mariella had delivered her from the wilderness and welcomed her into a new world.
Greetings from thousands of voices echoed through her head. From the intelligent dolphins to the crawling critters with simple brains, they all paid their respects. Their animal sentiments were translated into things such as, “ Happy you will help us,” and “I won’t eat you now.”
She could access their minds as well, and even gaze through their eyes. She saw a bird’s eye view of the
