Raash turned his head from me, to the bloody Investigator, then he extended a claw toward Floramel. “You. I recall you. I once called you my mating-toy.”
“That’s right. That was your pet name for me.”
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t polite, but I was kind of irritated and grossed out. This lizard… sheesh.
“Do you remember me, Raash?” I asked.
He steered those odd eyes my way. He cocked his head to the left, then the right, the way a parrot will look at you with one side of his head then the other. He took two steps toward us.
Floramel shrank back, moving behind me, but I stood my ground. I wasn’t happy about this development. Here I was, duty-bound to protect her, after she’d gone and upset her weird lizard boyfriend. Maybe we’d kill each other—it wouldn’t be the first time. What an unpleasant predicament.
“Look, Raash,” I said. “We worked so hard to revive you. Why aren’t you grateful?”
Raash stopped advancing. His eyes glittered in the faint light. “I remember now… things are returning to my mind. You are the human that stole my breath, my life. You took me from Rigel, and you burned me to ash!”
“That’s exactly right! You are remembering stuff.”
Raash’s eyes were strange. I couldn’t tell if they were focused on me or Floramel for the moment. Probably, it was neither one of us.
He was remembering things, I could tell. It was like a flood for him, a rude awakening. He put his claws to his head and lifted his snout high. I thought he might crow like a rooster or something.
“Raash?” Floramel said from behind me. Her voice was gentle but full of pain. “Raash, you’re having a mental break. It will pass. The revival… it wasn’t professional. It was the best we could do for you.”
“Not professional?” he demanded loudly. He took another step in our direction, and his hands came away from his head. He grasped at the air, flexing his claws over and over as he spoke.
I’d never seen a lizard go crazy before, but if there had ever been such a case, I figured this is what it had looked like.
“Where is my body? This one… it is taller. The tail is longer, the arms are slightly less thick… and the scales… blue scales? I’m a freak.”
“You’re a freak?” I asked. “Why? I mean, most saurians I would classify as freaks just on principle, but—”
“Blues are rare and they’re laughed at. I’ll never find a mate like this.”
“You have a mate, Raash. I’m your mate.”
We both looked at Floramel. She had dared to peep out from behind me. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Madness…” Raash said. “I feel… wrong, somehow.”
I glanced at Floramel. “Maybe he means it. Maybe if you stuff one man’s mind into the brain of a stranger, it doesn’t fit right.”
“Have you seen a case like this before, James?”
“Never.”
Raash was walking in circles, tramping right over the poor old Investigator. His claws left prints in the man’s flesh, and his tail rasped over him like a scaly fire hose.
The Investigator moaned again.
“He’s alive! Raash, stop walking over him, you crazy lizard. He gave you life.”
“Then he deserves death for such a poorly done job.”
Raash stooped over the Investigator, and I’d seen enough. I picked up a block of fallen stone, walked up to him and bashed him down.
Most lizards are pretty tough. Raash was no exception, but he went down anyways, collapsing to the rough stones. Maybe he’d been weakened by his amateur-hour revive.
I held the rock in my hand, and I bounced it up and down a few times. It was as big as a softball and five times as heavy.
“Should I finish the job?” I asked Floramel.
“I… I don’t…”
“No…” this last voice came from the floor, but it wasn’t emanating from the throat of Raash. Instead, we realized the Investigator had spoken. “Don’t harm my masterwork.”
We helped the Investigator to his feet and sprayed him with some Nu-skin. He winced and hissed, but after a few minutes his only critical injury was his left arm, which seemed broken in two places. There were plenty of crescent-shaped bites taken out of it as well.
“Raash is a wild one, is he?” the Investigator asked when he could speak.
“Not really,” Floramel said. “This streak of violence is out of character for him.”
The old man scoffed, but he didn’t argue. “You begged for his creation. He’s your responsibility now.”
We helped the new, blue-scaled Raash onto his feet and led him out of the place. He was kind of floppy and groggy, but he could walk well enough. That was a good thing, because he had to weigh a hundred and fifty kilos—maybe more.
We took him outside under the night sky. There, I let him down on the dusty ground and sighed.
“We should probably just kill him, Floramel. It would really be for the best.”
“What? Never!”
She crouched and spread her hands over him.
“Jeez, girl. He almost killed the man that brought him back. He doesn’t like being a blue. Maybe we can record him, like, and take his remains—”
“You’re just blowing smoke up my ass,” she said stubbornly. “Isn’t that the correct idiom?”
“Yeah, well. I guess it is… look, girl, we can’t take this wild renegade back to Earth. He’s dangerous, crazy, and a traitor to boot.”
A strange smile came over her. “No he isn’t. He’s unknown. Any scan of his flesh will show no history. No citizen of Earth or Cancri-9 has ever matched his DNA. As far as Hegemony knows, he’s innocent and nameless—a fresh immigrant.”
“Huh…” I said, chewing that
