“Am I seeing things?” Byxx muttered in a confused stupor. He'd just caught a whiff of something earthy and metallic but couldn’t place what caused the unusual odor. “It’s… the Wastes… My home…”
It was too real to be a hallucination. All around the archfiend, dark rock spires and acres of sandy wastes stretched out for an eternity, blending imperfectly with the shabby living room on Earth. He stared wide eyed at the slapdash huts of military troops, the pit fires surrounded by hungry soldiers over savory-smelling cooking pots, and a full-dark aurora in the northern night skies. In an instant, the visions dissolved, leaving him out of breath and trembling.
“Blast and confound it.” Byxx shook his head to reclaim his senses. “What was that?”
His attention diverted to Iris, who was sweating profusely and cupping her head in her hands. Beside her was Zayzann, who ruffled his down, raised his cranial feathers, and unfurled his massive blue wings, exposing their creamy blue undersides. He waved his limbs around, fending off unseen assailants and backing away from the other roommates. Khazmine stood by, unable to understand or detect the strange agent that had addled her organic companions.
“Mistress, please explain.” Khazmine’s eyes boggled as she knelt beside Iris, who appeared to be the most distressed by the onset of whatever was bothering them. “I do not understand. What are you seeing?”
“Fires.” Iris’s eyes were round, full, and utterly lifeless as she spoke. Her stare pierced for miles, unable to focus on anyone around her. “Mountains of black rock… A city by the sea that goes forever.”
“No, no!” Zayzann drew his ears back and tucked his tail between his legs, terrified of the fearsome apparition that no one else could see. “Go away! We don’t need you—"
Zayzann knocked over a potted fiddle leaf fig plant from its stand with his frantic flapping of his immense wings. The sound of shattering pottery drew Byxx to him, and the archfiend tried to tamp the wings down with a hug from behind. Zayzann’s tail slapped into Byxx’s thighs, stinging his legs with each strike. Byxx chafed against the bristling feathers and struggled to get his arms wrapped around both the wings and Zayzann’s body, as the Paxoram had gone mad from unseen horrors.
“Khazmine! Help!” Byxx called out to the Augment, who was still discerning what ill had befallen her roommates. “He’s too hard to control. Khaz!”
Khazmine bit her curled index finger through her glove as the orange alert light flashed again in her vision. Not knowing what else to do, she retracted her forearm plates back and snapped her electrified cable into a six foot length. The whip cracked expertly into the bewildered Paxoram at the shoulder, barely missing Byxx by mere inches.
A muted sound like distant thunder rattled in Byxx’s ears, causing him to release Zayzann and clasp his ears in agony. Zayzann pitched forward and dropped to his knees, panting desperately for air. Khazmine recalled her tendril and jostled something in her pockets, causing it to clink.
The plate. Khazmine shuddered. The blue powder coating that allowed her to camouflage. That was it. Of course, Khazmine couldn’t smell anything, but her roommates must have.
She would have had no way to know, none whatsoever. The Progenitors had crafted her new body with great care, employing the most sophisticated technology for their Augments, and it was this strange powder that made her camouflage possible. By running a current through her “skin,” she could become anyone, and do anything. In her many years, Khazmine had never once thought about what her components were made of.
Whatever the Progenitors had used to coat her carapace had poisoned the roommates, forcing them to confront visions they couldn’t understand. Byxx was the first to shake off the effects of the toxic particles, but it left him with a pounding headache and poor depth of field until his vision stabilized.
“I am undone.” Byxx muttered as he hoisted himself up with the reluctant aid of the nearby guest chair. “Khaz, do you know what that was?”
She bit her lip and eyed Zayzann and Iris, who were struggling to shake off their own phantoms. Khazmine had a fair idea of what had happened, but not why. What was it about this powder that affected them so? Byxx had touched her plates before and received a shock for his trouble, but this was different. The alarm threatened to trip again in Khazmine’s head, and she opted for honesty before more falsehoods got her in trouble again.
“It was likely caused by my broken plate.” Khazmine produced the plastic bag from her pocket and held it out for Byxx to examine. A faint whimper from Iris drew her attention, and Khazmine broke off to comfort her. “It’s all right, mistress. You’re safe here.”
“What about your plate?” Zayzann had overheard their conversation and was snapping himself back to reality on the floor. “What happened?”
“I believe that the electrically charged coating on my plates is hallucinogenic.” Khazmine guessed. “It is possible that inhaling it has caused you to experience strange sights or memories.”
“And what are we supposed to do about it?” Byxx asked as he tidied the broken pot shards from the displaced fiddle leaf fig plant. “Are you poisonous to us?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Khazmine pondered aloud. “Otherwise, this would have happened before. Perhaps it is only after inhaling from a damaged plate.”
“Well, keep that stuff away from us, Khaz.” Zayzann grumbled as he rubbed the sore spot on his shoulder where her tendril had struck him. “I don’t want to see that place again.”
“Where did it take you?” Byxx asked curiously.
“Ow, my head.” Iris rejoined the roommates with a wince. “I just had the weirdest dream.”
The roommates sat together to commiserate on what happened, sharing their experiences with Khazmine’s dust. Byxx had been transported back to the Wastes, Iris to several strange worlds, and Zayzann preferred not to speak about his visions. Khazmine was the last to share, noting a positive side effect to the exposure.
“Byxx, you weren’t here to see it, but Iris had cut her hand earlier.” Khazmine pointed to where the injury had been on Iris’s hand. “But now, look; the wound has vanished.”
“I wonder if it’s like—” Byxx trailed off, leaving his thought unfinished. “Anyway, what’s to be done about this?”
There was an insistent ring on the faulty doorbell. A stout, impatient man waited for Iris to shakily accept the delivery food and give him a wad of bills, scoffing at having to count singles before departing to his jalopy. After relocating to the kitchen, Byxx, Khazmine, and Zayzann insisted that Iris finish her food, even though the events of the evening had sapped her enthusiasm for it.
“I don’t think there’s much we can do.” Iris confessed. “Khazmine stays. That’s non-negotiable. We’ll need to be more mindful of her components in the future, that’s all. Do you want any of this soup?”
“No, thank you.” Zayzann declined before clenching his jaw tightly. His ears were still drawn back from before, and the tension in his body forced his feathers to puff out. “Just eat.”
I wish you would stop offering us all your food. Why don’t you ever take care of yourself first?
“Are you mad?” Iris asked as she tried to read his facial expressions with little success.
“It’s not like that.” Zayzann deflected. “Mad” wasn’t the right word for this feeling. The strange sensation crawled all over his body and under his skin, forcing his muscles to tense and toe talons to tug at the floor. “I didn’t care much for what I saw earlier, that’s all.”
Everyone was exhausted by midnight, having spent the humid evening discussing options to protect against further exposures to dangerous powders. It was decided that Khazmine should take charge to conceal her damaged plates away from the apartment, where no one else could find them. Fortunately, she already had a cache prepared off-site to squirrel away her damaged components.
Byxx waited up for her to return, but succumbed to exhaustion long before she showed up. His dreams filled once again with his homeland, and he yearned for the comforts of the sandy oasis.
Pacing the spare room in tight circuits was Zayzann, too upset by his apparitions to settle for the night. The uncomfortable, skin-crawling feeling persisted, tormenting him every time he attempted to rest. Zayzann forced himself to stop scratching at the relentless itchiness, as he feared it would damage his body. Even wide awake, he was pursued by impossible dreams.
Nestled away in the warmth of the bedroom, Iris writhed and contorted from fitful fancies. She returned once again to the wind-swept vistas of an alien world, revisiting the ivory feathered Paxoram she had shadowed before. She followed her host from howling dawn to tranquil dusk, foraging for food and repairing a damaged nest.
Iris marveled at the golden wing tips of this host as the sun’s light sent vibrant reflections that blinded her. She was small for her species, only reaching chest-height to her male peers, but had the most lush feathers Iris had ever seen. If she had any other faults, they included a row of missing feathers on her left wing, and a patch of her tail that was bare and exposed to the harsh winds of Zhalterra.
They had a bond, Iris noticed, an unspoken agreement to share their triumphs and struggles through the difficult days. And despite having no watch-mate, this Paxoram slept easily with Iris’s off-world presence haunting her. As the weary Paxoram woman fell asleep on a breezy night on the rocky prospect, Iris woke to another grueling workday from the melodious chime of her cellphone alarm.
The blistering brightness of the morning sun fiendishly clawed its way up to the rooftop terrace of the GC&S building, where Warren Maker was enjoying one of his job’s finer perks. Rooftop access was usually limited to the executive staff, but Warren had convinced the c-suite bigwigs that if was also an ideal spot to meet with clients they wanted to impress.
He often found himself sneaking up to enjoy a tryst with one of the office girls, or simply to grab a cigarette without tripping the building’s ever-watchful smoke detectors. Someone had recently complained of smelling smoke in the emergency stairwell, so he’d had to seek refuge on the rooftop this morning. That suited him just as well, as Warren had business to attend to before nine.
Warren made quick work of the remainder of his cigarette, inhaling greedily on the last puffs of relief he could manage. His “specialist” was late, but had promised to have preliminary findings for him before GC&S opened for the day. A jingle of the rooftop access door clued Warren in to the specialist’s arrival.
“You’re late.” Warren chided as he smashed his spent cigarette into a gilded-edge ashtray. “I hope you have something interesting to make up for your tardiness.”
“I was running a few leads for you and got tied up.” The strange man replied in a low, husky voice that put Warren on edge. He had a crude, rumpled appearance, misshapen by years of abuse in his trade, and the cold, calculating eyes of a stalking predator on the hunt. “Nothing much to report, I’m afraid.”
“Well?” Warren insisted. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”
“I couldn’t find anything usable on her.” The specialist confessed with a sneer. “Mom dead, deadbeat dad, and a wastrel for a sister. Aside from a car accident and a few unpaid bills, your girl is squeaky clean.”
“You mean to tell me that you couldn’t find anything?” Warren’s lips curled at this news.
“Look, I said what I said. You've got me chasing phantoms, Mr. Maker.” The specialist hissed. “There isn’t anything even remotely interesting about this woman.”
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