Page 9 of Rebirth

Anyone trained in anything is utterly useful as humanity tries to rebuild.

I nod at her, and she smiles at me again before patting me on the shoulder. “I’ll be in Team Tent A if you need me.”

My gaze remains on the alien in the distance as she steps away and all else disappears.

The wind, the laughter of the children, the people talking around me. Everything fades into nothingness as I look back at him.

And then…he disappears.

The alien turns. He walks away, and I’m left staring at the space in which he once stood.

* * *

HE’ROX

Claws and heel sinking into the ground beneath me, I sense the life source of this planet. A steady beat despite the evil it has encountered.

But there is…something else.

The thing that tethers me to the ones that came.

My focus is snagged away from something that caught my attention. I cannot remember what now, as I walk away from the camp. I’m summoned, the source of which, I am unsure.

Steady beats, ricocheting deep under the surface.

I feel it under my feet, but it is different from before. Different from all the other times I’ve felt this source.

Something is…interfering. The same thing that calls to me.

And that can only mean one thing.

I move through the camp like a wisp, few of the hyu’mans paying me attention as I walk to the boundary of their new settlement. My claws dig into the soil with each stride, and I sense the life pulsing within this planet. Faint. Almost snuffed out. But still there.

Turning slightly, I eye the trees beyond.

Water. Close by. I can scent it. It calls me as if I need it. Calls that part of me I wish to destroy, but my gaze remains on the trees.

Tall, wiry. They hardly provide shelter. But there is something there.

A distortion. A subtle wrongness that has been there from the moment we arrived on this world, only now, it is…

What is it doing?

Living energy, it calls to that intrusion inside me I’d rather ignore.

But I can’t ignore it.

I am within the trees before I realize I’ve moved, traveled here with only a thought. My head tilts as I look around, eyes sliding over the thin trunks of the vegetation.

This is why I remain on the ship. Being out here, on the ground, I sense too much of those creatures I’d rather never see again.

But whatever I am looking for is not above.

It is below.

Falling to my knees, my claws press into the soil, the dirt coming into contact with my palm as I feel for whatever it is.

And I dig.

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