TRIXIE & ME: 2:01 Chained

Trixie lay in a fetal position, hugging her legs against her chest as she curled up on the ground, trying to stay warm. Her eyes flickered in the dark, taking in the soft glow around her. The ground was dirty, almost oily. Plant roots ran beneath her, crisscrossing the floor. A little warmth radiated through the leathery surface, coming up from the engines deep below, but it wasn't enough to stave off the chill hanging in the air.

Trixie’s first thought on waking was that she was naked. Goosebumps prickled her skin. Her covering was gone, and that surprised her more than the alien environment in which she found herself. She felt vulnerable, alone and somewhat scared. Sitting up, Trixie struggled to clear her thinking as she looked around, trying to make out where she was.

A soft hum rang in her ears. Things moved about her, scurrying around her, ignoring her. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. She wasn't sure if they were tiny machines or something that was alive. Either way, she didn't want to know. They were leaving her alone in the darkness, and that was fine with her. She had no desire to change the arrangement.

Trixie blinked, her eyes taking in the soft light. The cavern was large, at least a hundred feet high, with irregular, curved walls spiraling inward toward each other, joining at a point high above. The walls around her looked like the inside of a hollow tree. The trunk was gnarled, the tree rotten. Faint specks of light ran up the twisted knots. Tiny pinpricks of red, yellow and green pierced the darkness, spreading throughout the cavern like ants climbing an ivy vine.

Trixie could see Berry.

Berry hung in mid-air. He was suspended without any means of visible support, his feet just inches from the ground, his head drooping to one side. The soft, orange glow of a force field surrounded him. Like her, he was naked.

His body puzzled her, she'd only ever seen him dressed, at least that was all she could recall in her hazy memory. The contours of his muscles, the hair on his chest, the stubble on his face, they aroused something primal within her. This was a feeling she didn't understand. Her thoughts were confused, muddled.

Something ran across Trixie’s hand. Prickly feet danced briefly across her fingers. She wanted to scream, but she resisted, pursing her lips so as to avoid making a sound. Slowly, she withdrew her hand from where she had been leaning, not wanting to arouse any inadvertent attention.

As Trixie got up, she felt clumsy. Her legs felt too long, her arms too lanky. She crept forward with her fingers and arms splayed wide to keep her balance. Stiff and sore, she pushed through the ache in her muscles. Trixie stepped over a thick root and tripped, falling forward, landing on all fours, but her fall was slow, her landing soft. Gravity was reduced.

“Trix,” Berry called out, seeing her in the shadows. “You've got to get me out of here, babe.”

Trixie shook her head slowly, watching her dark hair dangle in front of her face. She got back to her feet, trying to shake the drugged lethargy of the moment, not sure what had happened to her. Was this a dream? A nightmare? Was any of this real? She was disoriented, detached.

“Trix, Honey,” called Berry. “Come on, baby. You can do this.”

Trixie heard Berry, but she wasn't interested. There were too many other strange and unusual things competing for her attention, too much she was curious about, things she wanted to understand.

Something caught her eye, a colorful bracelet lying on the ground nearby. She picked it up, examining it closely. Trixie wasn't sure why, but she sniffed the material. She wasn't sure what she expected it to smell like, but the bracelet smelt musty, almost familiar. Holding the band, she looked at the petite woven threads. The rainbow strands of colors were dull within the dark chamber. It must have been pretty to look at in the light, she thought. A small bell hung from a silver name tag looped over the bracelet. In the dim light, the polished silver reflected muted colors like a mirror. The flicker of light was beautiful, she decided, even if she couldn't see it properly.

Trixie slipped the bracelet over her wrist. The bell tinkled softly as she moved. Trixie liked the sound. Her mind was struggling to comprehend what was going on, where she was, what had happened to her, what had happened to Berry. Deep inside, she wanted to block everything out, to ignore the bizarre sensations and focus on the simple things, like the bracelet and the bell. Trixie felt confused, afraid, but the soft ring of the bell was strangely comforting, and that made her feel better.

“We don't have time for this, Trix.”

Trixie walked slowly toward Berry, tiptoeing as she picked her way over the forest-like floor of the cavern. Roots and vines twisted along the ground. They climbed over each other, diving beneath the surface and reappearing again.

Stepping on the balls of her feet, Trixie moved gracefully, carefully, her arms stretched out on either side of her naked body. Like a gymnast on a beam, she adjusted her arms to keep her balance in the confusing gravitational field.

“That's it,” Berry said. “I know this is hard for you. I know. You're doing great. Get me out of here, and we'll get back to the Swift and get the hell out of this mess, but you've got to be quick, Trix. They'll be back soon. Do you understand?”

Trixie stepped up onto the ledge beside Berry. She'd heard his words, but she didn't understand them. Berry’s words seemed disjointed, like words spoken at random. She knew her name. She liked hearing her name, but the other words were a jumble of noise. Swift, mess, hell, quick – somehow she knew the terms, but their meaning was lost. They made no sense in a sentence.

Trixie stared at Berry with a mixture of bewilderment and curiosity. She turned her head sideways as she watched him slowly rotating within the force-field.

“You've got to figure out how to disable this thing,” he said.

Trixie reached out, her hand passing harmlessly through the glowing field, and ran her fingers through his hair, stroking his head gently. She ran her nails over his scalp. It felt nice to touch Berry.

“Not now, Trix. Look, you're beautiful, you're pretty, but I need you to focus. I need you to get me out of here. Do you understand?”

Trixie ran her fingers over Berry's muscular shoulders and through the hair on his chest, clawing at him, feeling the muscles beneath his skin. She was fascinated by Berry. She couldn't explain what was going through her mind, but to touch him felt good. Her fingers played with the hair on his forearm, fascinated by the sense of touch, the warmth, the soft textures.

Berry sighed, exasperated. “Trix. You can't do this! Trixie, please, listen to me! Bellatrix, please listen!”

Something resonated within her. She knew those names, all three. They were her names, she remembered that. Although she couldn't explain why, Trixie felt compelled to obey Berry. She pulled her hand away from the shimmering field surrounding him and stood back, looking at him coldly. Words, concepts, hormones and emotions, they bounced around in her head, conflicting with each other.

“The controls are over there,” Berry said, unable to move his arms but nodding with his head.

Trixie looked around the dark cavern, hearing his voice echoing in the void.

Black shapes swarmed over the walls. Soft lights glowed from beneath the hard outer shells of the tiny insect-like aliens crawling over the mat of tree roots and branches. Trixie felt drawn to the strange creatures. Her fear faded the more she moved around. She was feeling bold, empowered. As her thinking cleared, she found herself growing more curious.

She crouched and reached out to touch one of the small creatures scuttling past on the ground. She wanted to learn about it, to toy with it, to play with it as a child would with a pet. She picked up one of the insect-like animals by its shell. The creature’s legs continued pumping as though they were still touching the ground. She turned the critter around, putting it down so it faced the way it came, and it scurried off, fighting against the current of other creatures swarming around it. The tiny alien was mindless, which surprised her.

Another creature caught her eye. This one was segmented, with hundreds of spiky legs protruding from its segmented body sections snaking some six feet behind it. The creature was thin, barely an inch wide, and looked like a centipede, but without a visible head. Trixie put her foot down in front of it, blocking its path. The creature reversed its motion without turning around, moving backwards smoothly and climbing on top of an adjacent root that weaved along the floor at a slightly different angle. From there, the long, flexible creature straightened up and proceeded forward again, without turning and changing the direction it was facing.

Trixie was fascinated.

“Trix, we don't have time for this.”

Berry sounded exhausted, frustrated.

Berry was no fun.

As Trixie moved over by the twisted wall, a holographic projection rose up in front of her. She'd stepped up on a slightly raised platform, activating the image.

“Don't touch that, Trix.”

Trixie was intrigued.

The holograph sprawled out, a three-dimensional image of a dense tree branching into millions of fine filaments, or perhaps it was a giant brain attached to a spinal cord, or the growth of a coral head or some bizarre alien cauliflower, whatever it was, it stretched some fifteen feet across through the air in front of her. The image was semi-transparent, allowing her to see through to the different end points on the far side. As she waved her hand over the image it turned, rotating around her in response to the motion of her arms.

Trixie laughed.

She liked the pretty lights.

“Leave that alone, Trix.”

Naked, she lifted both hands above her head and the entire image turned upside down, turning over on the x-axis, exposing the single root from which the tree branched out in all of its complexity. The trunk was stubby, dividing in two, before those limbs split again and then further, diverging into hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of branches, each one blossoming and spreading out further again into thin veins covering millions of end points at varying depths. The tips looked like a sea of stars. Trixie felt giddy looking at the immense structure, all linked back to that single point at the base. She lowered her arms and the coral tree rotated down, showing the plethora of possible end points as a field of fine white dots floating in the air. One of them glowed red.

“Don't touch that, Trixie.”

Trixie couldn't help herself. Her curiosity was overwhelming.

She wanted to play, not to run and hide. She had to touch the miniature star. There was nothing else she could do when faced with such a wonderful, beautiful sight. Her hand reached through the air, skimming over the sea of jewels as her finger touched the small, red terminal point.

The image changed.

The branching structure beneath the glowing red star lit up in a brilliant variety of complementary colors. The trail winding through the tree toward its base showed multiple alternate end points all branching off in different, lesser shades of red, slowly fading to orange and yellow on the fringes.

“Don't touch anything, Trix. Just step away. I need you to figure out how to turn that damn thing off.”

Trixie heard him. She understood “don't,” but she decided, no. Looking at the fine filaments, she touched a point near the base of the upper junction leading to the tiny, pretty red star. She wondered what this marvelous machine would do, if it was a machine. It seemed organic, more alive than any computer was. Trixie was curious.

As she pulled her hand back, another image appeared above the glowing branch, a set of human chromosomes. Twenty three pairs of chromatids floated in the air, each one looking like an earthworm, or a fuzzy caterpillar all scrunched up. Some of them were pinched in the middle, others were pinched together. Sections of the DNA coiled within these chromosomes glowed, highlighting the genetic changes that had occurred since this last juncture in the evolutionary tree of life.

Berry screamed, crying out in agony. The muscles in his arm flexed as his head swung back in pain. Although his upper torso and legs were held fast by the force field, Trixie could see his muscles clenching as though seized with a cramp.

Trixie was startled by his cry.

She panicked.

Instinctively, she leaped, with her only thought being to flee. In the low gravity, her muscles propelled her ten feet in the air, and she grabbed hold of one of the mighty branches twisting upward toward the specks of light above. Instantly, her body was pulled sideways against the wall, held there by the gravitational realignment within the alien vessel that made every wall a floor.

Trixie's change in orientation was confusing, disorienting. She looked back at Berry and the holographic image, they seemed to be stuck to the wall beside her, instead of below her. Berry's cries and the bewildering nature of her sense of down scared her even more. Trixie felt she had to hide from the raw power being unleashed around her.

The force field around Berry glowed, throbbing and pulsating with light.

Trixie watched Berry’s form change over the course of several minutes. Berry squirmed, trying to free himself from the invisible chains that bound him, but it was useless. His skin darkened as his head distorted, his cheekbones widened, his jaw grew larger, and the brow above his eyes thickened and extended slightly outward. Hair bloomed, covering most of his body. His back seemed to arch into a hunch, no longer straight. Berry struggled in vain as his muscles gained bulk. His forearms and hands looked coarse and thick. He looked over at her, his eyes pleading. He grunted, unable to speak. The force field surged in its intensity and Berry howled in agony.

Trixie had been bad. She should have listened to Berry. This was wrong. Even for her, this was too much. She shouldn't have played with the hologram, but she didn't know what would happen. She wanted to know what would happen, she was curious, not malicious.

Trixie wanted Berry back, her Berry.

With unusual grace, she sprang off the wall as though she were jumping from the ground. She twisted through the air. In the light gravity, Trixie drifted before landing silently in a crouched position. Her sense of up never changed, but the vast chamber seemed to twist and distort and swing around her as she landed on the floor that, seconds before, had seemed like a wall.

Her hands were shaking. Trixie hadn't meant to hurt Berry. She loved Berry. Her fingers trembled as she reached into the holographic image, carefully moving the glowing red star back to the outer filaments of the tree, hoping that would be enough to reverse the process.

Berry screamed again, but this time his cry was deep and chesty. His body shook in a continuous spasm as genetic changes were applied to the cellular structure of his entire body. Trixie watched in anguish as the minutes slowly passed. She was torturing him, but she didn't mean to cause him such pain. Trixie felt awful. At those points where she could no longer watch him writhing in agony, she hung her head in shame.

The contorted, twisted look on his face slowly returned to normal. His skin lightened, his back straightened, the excess hair fell away, drifting lazily out of the force field and to the floor, his claw-like nails retreated. Insects swarmed over the ground and converged on the hair, whisking it away into the shadows.

As the pulsating field died down, Berry was left panting, gasping for breath. Tears ran down his cheeks. Blood dripped from his nose.

“Trixie,” he whispered. “Please.”

Trixie didn't know what to do. She tried to speak. She tried to say sorry, but nothing came out, just a hoarse croak. The cold around her seemed to add to her confusion. What could she do? She didn't understand, she couldn't understand.

The holographic image rested in front of her. She noticed it emanated from a smooth silver disc set into the center of the platform. Trixie decided she hated the pretty lights. She hated what they had done to Berry. She wanted to be rid of the image, to destroy it. Trixie reached through the glowing filaments with her foot, hoping she was doing the right thing, and stamped on the source of the image, kicking at it and covering it. The cavern darkened immediately. Berry dropped to the ground.

“Oh,” she cried, bounding over toward him in the light gravity and grabbing him. She helped him sit up as she struggled with her words. “I—I'm...”

“I know,” he said, catching his breath. “I know you didn't mean to hurt me. It's OK, babe. I know you're sorry.”

“Hurt. Sorry,” she said, repeating his words, grasping at their meaning.

Trixie pulled Berry’s head to her soft naked breast, wrapping her arms around him and holding his head close as she kissed his forehead and his hair. She didn't think anything of what she was doing. She relished the warmth of touch, the feel of life, the freedom and relief.

Berry got to his feet. Trixie grabbed at him, her hands running up and down his chest, fawning over him.

“Trix, don't.”

Berry’s clothes lay to one side. He tossed her a singlet, adding, “Put this on.”

Berry slipped on his trousers as Trixie stood there holding the cotton singlet, wondering what to do with it.

“Raise your hands,” he said. “Go on, it's okay.”

Trixie complied meekly and Berry slipped his singlet over her arms and head, pulling it down over her breasts and covering her waist and the upper half of her thighs.

“Clothes,” he said. “They keep us warm.”

“Warm,” she replied, finding it easy to mimic his sounds, vaguely remembering these concepts. She knew the words, she'd heard them spoken so often before, but it seemed only now that they had any meaning. Now, they were anchored in her mind to tangible, real concepts.

“Yes, warm. Do you feel warm or cold?” Berry asked, rubbing her arms. He picked up his jacket and helped her put it on. It felt cold, but she smiled, appreciating his interest and kindness.

“I feel cold,” she said, intuitively realizing cold was the opposite of warm. It was a sentence. She was learning.

“We've got to get out of here, Trix.”

Berry turned and started walking toward the back of the cavern.

Trixie stood there paralyzed in fear. She couldn't move, her legs wouldn't let her. This was all she knew, she couldn't leave. The thought of what else might be out there in the darkness terrified her. In here, there were bugs, branches, gnarled roots, soft tufts of moss, pretty insects that glowed like stars, images made from light, these were all things she knew, the only things she knew. Out there could be anything. Monsters waited in the shadows.

Berry turned back to her. He reached out, resting his hands on either side of her neck, gently caressing her shoulders before running his fingers up over her cheeks as he reached in and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“Oh, what have they done to you, my darling? I am so sorry. I know this must be hard for you, but you're doing great. Just stay with me, okay? Everything's going to be all right.”

Trixie nodded. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Berry held her hand, pulling her along with him as they weaved between the other vivisection platforms scattered throughout the dark cavern.

A large hole in the floor loomed at the back of the cave, marking the corridor running through this section of the alien ship.

The black abyss frightened Trixie. She remembered it. She remembered being caged. She remembered being dragged from corridor to corridor before being brought into this cavern. And she remembered the strange feeling in her stomach as gravity realigned within the tunnels winding through the alien ship.

Shafts of differing sizes branched through the interior of the craft like veins, following paths of organic purpose rather than straight lines. Her memories were like a dream, a haze in the back of her mind, but she knew what to expect as they approached the broad hole in the ground. Thick roots lined the floor, like cables snaking into a shaft, tripping her on the odd occasion. At one point, Berry slipped on the damp roots, falling slowly to the ground.

“Like falling in a swimming pool, ain't it?” he said as he caught himself with his outstretched hands. “Not that you'd know too much about getting wet.”

“Water?” she said, making a connection deep in the recesses of her mind.

“Yeah,” Berry replied. “That's right. Swimming pools are full of water. And here, on this craft, gravity is weak. It's hard for us, it's like fighting to move through syrup. You can't move as fast as you want to. It feels like you're being held back, but that's because our bodies evolved to move against the pull of one gravity, allowing us to rebound in a natural rhythm, but here, it feels like there's a lag, as though there's some kind of delay.”

“Syrup?” Trixie asked, struggling to piece together the rest of his sentences.

“Oh, you'll love syrup, Trix. It's sweet. Syrup goes well with pancakes.”

“Pancakes?”

“Yeah,” Berry replied, taking her hand again. “There's a lot you're going to have to learn about, Babe, but you'll like them, syrup and pancakes. Just keep talking, Honey. Try not to think about where you are. Try not to think about what's happening. Just keep thinking about syrup and pancakes.”

Although she knew what was coming, it was still a surprise to Trixie when down became forward and she realized Berry had walked her into the hole. Down had shifted. Down had changed, just as it had when she'd jumped up into the vines and branches on the wall.

With her fingers, Trixie pointed, trying to comprehend what had happened. The bell around her wrist rang softly. Down had been a concept she thought she understood. Her old down now lay in front of her, and yet down was still below her. Her mind struggled to grasp that she would no longer fall toward her old down as she had just seconds before. Berry could see the confusion in her face.

“Kind of trippy, huh,” he said. “Don't know that we'd ever get used to this, but it means our concept of upright has multiple meanings in just one room. Must be quite something, though, as it increases their usable space by a factor of six. These corridors are the worst, they're winding cylinders, like artery walls, so there is no right way up, all ways are right and all ways are up, all pointing in toward the middle. How the hell they do that without spinning the craft, I don't know. The techs on the Rift Valley would be impressed with this stuff, though.”

He let go of her hand, giving her some freedom.

The roots were larger in the spiraling corridor, reaching up to waist height and, in some places, forming knots slightly over her head. Trixie touched one, feeling it pulsate. Berry seemed to know where he was going, so she pressed on behind him. Her bell rang as her arms swung beside her.

“We're going to have to lose that bell, Trix.”

Trixie shook her head. A look of horror crossed her face at the thought of losing her bracelet, but she wasn’t sure why. With her other hand, she silenced the bell.

“You can't do that forever, Trix. We've got to be quiet. We can't do anything that would give us away to these buggers. You're going to have to take that off and leave it here.”

“No,” she replied, fiddling with the silver tag and the bell. If she slipped the woven bracelet down her wrist, she could rest the metallic tag and the bell in the palm of her hand and hold them silent with her fingers.

“I know it means a lot to you, but I can get you another one.”

“No,” she repeated, defiant. It felt good to be assertive, to be herself, to express her needs in unambiguous terms. No was such a powerful word. It carried so much depth behind it, far more than warm or cold, pancakes or syrup. Trixie decided she liked no.

“OK, but you keep that thing quiet,” Berry said, his voice barely audible.

“OK,” she replied in a whisper. In the midst of the darkness, in the cold and danger, words became her refuge. Trixie struggled to comprehend everything Berry said, but that he would say something was a relief, a distraction.

Critters scurried past her in the dark, clinging to the tangled roots, scrambling along beside her. Centipedes and spiders, at least, that's what they looked like to her. They spooked her. She flinched, trying not to scream as one of them ran over her hand, its claws clinging briefly to her skin. As in the chamber, whenever she put her hand out to steady herself, it seemed one of these creatures would scurry across her soft skin.

“It's OK, Babe. They're workers, not thinkers. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“Afraid,” she said, linking another concept in her mind.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Berry repeated, edging forward cautiously within the tunnel. He kept low. “They're cleaners, repairmen, mechanics, plumbers. They won't hurt you.”

“Won't hurt you.”

“That's right. They won't hurt you. They won't hurt me,” he said, pointing at her and then at himself.

“Won't hurt you,” she repeated, touching him in the center of his chest, before pointing at herself and adding, “Won't hurt me.”

“There. See. You're a fast learner. You and me.”

“You and me,” she replied smiling.

Berry smiled back.

Trixie liked it when Berry smiled.

Berry turned and pushed on, following the contour of a large root with thick vines wrapping around it. The vines appeared to be suffocating the winding trunk. He whispered under his breath, laughing to himself as he said, “Here I am, stuck in a goddamn alien war craft, giving English lessons to a newborn. We're screwed. We are so totally screwed.”

“Screwed?” Trixie asked, whispering as well, mimicking Berry in as many respects as she could.

“I'll explain that one to you later. We've got to get the hell out of Dodge before they realize we're on the run and turn us into a pile of prokaryotes. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life as a mushroom.”

Trixie stole a look behind them as Berry paused at the intersection of six corridors in the heart of the craft, trying to get his bearings. As she looked back, she could see the point where they had entered the hole. Was it above them or below them, or just behind them? The notion of anchored spatial directions was meaningless within the alien spaceship. When they entered the corridor, up had been sideways. Down, it seemed, was always down wherever they happened to be as they curved around the inside of the vast tube, which was disorienting.

Trixie could see the central root they'd followed through the darkened corridor. It had twisted through three hundred and sixty degrees as it wound along the tunnel. They had gone upside down without realizing it, but then, there was no upside down here on the alien ship.

The curved veins running along the side of the massive root were teaming with workers streaming back and forth, their phosphorescent bodies glowing with an oily iridescence, providing what little light there was in the cold darkness.

Trixie reached out, running her fingers over the rough surface of the root beside her. The bark, if it could be called that, was different from the smooth textures in the vivisection chamber. The seemingly wooden surface felt stippled, raised up in hundreds of tiny lumps like the surface of a basketball. She could feel the root throb, pulsing beneath her fingertips with a slight rhythm. There was a harmony to it, a sense of purpose which she found perplexing.

The organic nature of the alien spacecraft was a stark contrast to the sterile, lifeless structure of the Swift. Trixie’s memory was fragmented, with fleeting glimpses of the white, clean surfaces, the right-angle corners, the hatchways and corridors within their scout craft. These were a huge contrast to the earthy tones and soft curves around her now. She remembered the metallic smell of ozone from the CO2 scrubbers on the Swift, like the smell that hung in the air after a thunderstorm. Here, though, the musty smell of decay lingered around her, repelling her.

When Trixie turned back, Berry was gone.

Panic swept over her.

Trixie started to call out his name, but thought better of it, not wanting to attract the wrong attention. She clambered forward over a large root, slipping and falling gently onto her back in a wedge between two of the main arteries.

What seemed like thousands of beetles, centipedes, spiders and cockroaches scurried over her, filling her with dread. Their spindly legs clawed at her arms, catching in her hair and clinging to her hands.

Trixie scrambled to her feet, shaking her arms and flicking the creatures from her body. Although she knew they were nothing like terrestrial insects, the feeling of dirt and decay overwhelmed her, filling her with revulsion. She was manic, grabbing at the creatures and tossing them to the ground. There had only been a handful of them clinging to her, but she continued pulling at her hair, convinced she could feel more of these alien insects crawling over her skin, hiding beneath her dark locks. Try as she may, there was nothing she could do to rid herself of the apparitions in her mind. Even after they were gone, she felt as though they were still scurrying over her, climbing up her arms and along her shoulders. As she watched the creatures scamper away, she knew they were just as startled as she was and just as glad to be rid of her, and yet she felt violated, defiled.

Trixie pushed on blindly, not sure where she was going, just wanting to get away from that junction, to be free from the terror of the moment.

A dim light glowed from an open chamber at the end of a narrow, slowly curving corridor. Thick vines entwined themselves around the artery-like tube. Trixie crept forward, her eyes scanning the darkness.

“Berry?” she whispered, more to set her nerves at ease from hearing a human voice than to actually find her lost partner.

Every couple of feet, she paused, running her hands through her hair to reassure herself there was nothing there.

Trixie felt dirty, soiled. Her long hair drifted around her, floating in front of her whenever she paused. The side tunnel was no more than fifteen feet in diameter, making it the smallest artery she had seen. When she stood, her head was within a couple of feet of the gravitationally neutral center of the tunnel, which put unusual stresses on her body. Her feet felt anchored, pulled outward by gravity, but her stomach seemed to float slightly in her chest, while her arms and hair were buoyant, seemingly weightless.

Trixie felt a little giddy with blood pooling in her extremities, so she crouched down as she moved toward the dim glow in the distance. She was trying to minimize the weightless effect. She hoped she'd would find Berry in the chamber beyond. As near as she could remember, he’d been heading in this direction.

A vast spherical cavern opened up ahead of her, stretching out over several hundred yards. At its heart, suspended in mid-air, lay a seething ball of golden dust, swirling like a sandstorm. A dim yellow light shone from the heart of the compressed sphere. It was diffuse, there was no clear boundary marking its outline, just the misty haze of dust fines growing ever denser toward the glowing center.

Trixie watched as the creatures, or workers as Berry had called them, formed a living chain, reaching up from the surrounding vines and branches into the swirling storm. She coughed. The powdery dust coated everything, getting in her hair, her eyes, her nose, on her lips and in her mouth, leaving a sharp, sour taste.

Trixie pulled her singlet up over her nose and mouth, using it as a filter to breathe through as she watched with fascination. Several strands of living bridges stretched out into the glowing mist from equidistant points around the chamber. These tiny creatures were harvesting the fine dust, carrying it away for use elsewhere.

Trixie was curious, although if asked, she couldn't have explained why she was curious, just that she was. The view startled her. It was the inconsistency of the topsy-turvy alien world that got her attention. Some kind of localized gravity caused the creatures swarming around her to stick to the walls of the vast chamber, but the center of the chamber with its bulbous dust cloud didn't seem to be subject to the craft's gravity, it seemed to have its own pull independent of the alien vessel, and that intrigued her. Trixie had expected this sphere to be similar to the shaft, weightless in the center, but it seemed everything in this vast chamber revolved around the dense, glowing dust cloud.

Trixie reached down and picked one of the smaller workers off a root, holding him by his shell as his feet splayed helplessly through the air. She tossed him at an angle, sending the creature across the chamber and not directly at the eddies swirling within the dust ball. The cockroach-like animal curved in an arc away from the chamber wall and down into the dust storm, disappearing from sight without having struck any visible surface.

“Having fun?” came a quiet voice from behind her.

Trixie almost screamed.

Berry placed his hand over her mouth, pulling her down into a gap between the roots. Trixie flinched, her heart leaping in her throat before the realization struck that Berry had found her.

“Don't wander off like that,” he whispered in her ear as he let go.

Trixie started to protest, wanting to point out that he had left her back at the intersection, when Berry whispered again in her ear, pointing off to one side.

“Thinkers.”

There, on the roof of the circular chamber, was a black shape, much larger than several men huddled together. In the grainy half-light, Trixie couldn't make out much detail, but, like the bugs around her, there was a faint glow of phosphorescence emanating from around the edge of what appeared to be an outer shell.

Trixie felt her heart racing. Her mouth went dry. She wanted to run. It was as though she could somehow escape from the alien craft if only she could run fast enough and far enough. Her muscles tensed. Berry must have realized what she was thinking as she poised, ready to spring at the slightest sign of danger. He whispered softly in her ear, saying, “Easy, girl. Don't panic. Keep it together.”

Trixie found herself breathing heavily, hyperventilating. It was irrational. Somehow, deep down, she knew that size was meaningless. Just because the creatures crawling past her were small didn't mean they weren't dangerous, it had worked out that way because of their function, not their size, and yet the imposing bulk of a thinker intimidated her. It seemed there was strength hidden there, coiled up in that dark body, with its crab-like feet poking out from beneath its shell.

“Come on,” Berry said, watching the thinker overseeing the extraction of the fine powder. “We've got to get back to the Swift. We need to see if we can get her started and get back home.”

“Home?” Trixie asked, the sound of loss in her voice.

“Yes. Home. Back on the Rift Valley.”

Berry inched backwards down the shaft, keeping a wary eye on the thinker moving around the chamber. Staying in the shadows, the two of them moved back to the junction.

Trixie grabbed at Berry's shoulder and upper arm, not wanting him to creep too far ahead of her. It wasn't the thinkers themselves that terrified her, it was the idea of being caught, the uncertainty about what would happen next. She had an irrational fear of being brutally slaughtered by some dark inhuman monster.

The bell on her bracelet rang softly in the dark. Although the sound was soothing to her, Berry whipped around, holding his finger to his mouth, signaling for her to be quiet. Her lips turned down, her head bowed, and she gripped the small bell in the palm of her hand again, feeling scolded.

After reaching the convoluted intersection, Berry picked his way slowly across the network of tunnels. The two of them defied gravity as they twisted around and over the ceiling into another major artery.

Berry signaled for Trixie to pause. Without turning back toward her, he reached behind, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her down as he crouched low. His eyes were focused on something in the darkness.

A thinker scurried past not more than ten feet from them, its millipede-like feet carrying the alien smoothly over the roots. Trixie's heart pounded in her chest. They waited for a few minutes before continuing on in silence.

Further along the shaft, water pooled in the shallow gaps between the roots. A slippery moss grew on the twisted vines winding around the roots. After ten minutes spent creeping along in the shadows, Berry paused, taking a rest.

“Look at you,” he said softly, staring back at Trixie for the first time since they left the dust chamber. “You're covered in pollen or something.”

He reached out and brushed her shoulders and arms, knocking the dust off her jacket, but it was everywhere, on her face and in her hair. Trixie liked the attention. She liked being groomed and would have loved the opportunity to clean herself. She liked wearing Berry's jacket. It was baggy, with the shoulders hanging down over her arms, but the leather was warm. Even with the cuffs rolled up, her hands barely poked out the bottom of the sleeves.

“Look at you,” repeated Trixie, and Berry laughed. He ran his hands through her hair, stroking her gently, which felt strangely comforting to her.

“You look like me,” Trixie said. Even simple sentences were a struggle, but she felt compelled to make the comparison.

Berry ran his fingers through his own hair and watched as a flour-like dust settled around him. He smiled.

“Yes, look at me too.”

His bare chest was coated in the fine white powder.

It took another forty minutes of creeping through the twisting main shaft before Trixie noticed any change in the textures within the tunnel.

It had been a long time since she'd seen any of the dusty chambers that seemed to be the focus of attention for the workers and thinkers in the heart of the craft. The roots began to get thinner. The side branches spread out in a variety of directions like the veins on Berry’s muscular arms. None of them struck out at a right angle, which seemed curiously inefficient. The bark changed in texture. Now it flaked off easily, breaking into thin wafers. Any loose scraps were quickly picked up by workers and squirreled away into the shadows.

“We're getting close,” Berry whispered. “By my reckoning, we were easily two miles beneath the surface, but I think we're almost there.”

A thicket of branches blocked one of the minor shafts further down the tunnel. Berry picked his way around the entrance, moving to what, moments earlier, had been upside down. He was following a trail of workers streaming in and out of the tangled mesh.

“They're repairing the damage,” he said softly. “This is where they rammed my ship. I think they’re absorbing it, trying to assimilate it like some kind of food.”

“And me?” Trixie asked. “My ship?”

“And you,” Berry replied. “Your ship. You were there too. Do you remember?”

“No.”

“You were there, Baby,” he said, squeezing her hand, trying to reassure her.

“I don't ...”

“Don't remember?” Berry asked tenderly.

“Just ...”

“Just a little?”

“Yes,” Trixie said.

Gnarled roots twisted around them, slowly sealing off the side tunnel at an imperceptible rate. White, sticky sap oozed from their tips, coating the roots in a thick resin.

Berry took care to avoid the sap, staying in the damp recesses of a root ball on the outer rim of the narrow tunnel. He tugged at the branches reaching up to cover the area, bending them so the two fugitives could squeeze through.

On the other side, moisture condensed on the rough ground, and they found themselves clambering over the wreckage of the torn, shattered shell fragments of the outer hull. Their progress was slowed by the new growth sealing the rupture. A thicket wound around them. Further down the darkened tunnel they came across the thin, semi-transparent skin of the outer hull. It had grown back over the impact site. Trixie rubbed the cold surface with her hand. The skin was still soft and flexible, almost like a sheet of rubber, but barely an inch thick. The leathery patch she rubbed clean revealed thousands of stars in the distance, tiny specks of light glowing in the black void of space. Trixie gasped at the sight.

“Pretty trippy, huh?” Berry said, looking at the stars.

“Pretty,” Trixie replied, confusing his choice of words with her own interpretation of the view.

“We're in a star cluster, babe.”

Berry pulled her on, ducking and weaving along the scars carved into the alien craft by their capture. Trixie got her foot caught between some of the roots. Slowly, but painfully, Berry helped her wriggle free. All the while, workers swarmed through the area like an army of giant ants.

After what seemed like forever, Trixie saw the titanium hull of the Swift, the scout vehicle Berry had piloted through the star cluster.

The Swift had only been a hundred yards away through the new growth, but it seemed like miles to Trixie. It had taken them less than twenty minutes to traverse the jungle of vines, but in Trixie's mind it had taken an eternity. Her hand ran over the smooth, shiny surface of the Swift. She appreciated the stark contrast to the alien craft. Just to feel the cool metal beneath her fingertips, the straight edges and gentle curves, felt good. For the first time, she felt as though they were going to escape.

Vines wrapped around the Swift, growing up from the roots. A mess of chaotic scaffolding crisscrossed the outer hull of the alien ship above the Swift.

The Swift was designed for traveling in space, and having been built in space, she lacked the sleek aerodynamics associated with planetary shuttles that had to contend with flying through an atmosphere.

There were no windows. There was no need for windows. The Swift was built for reconnaissance. She could see far more with her electronic eyes than any human eye could ever register within such a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Her smooth hull was intended to act as a Faraday cage, isolating the internal electronics from the sophisticated eavesdropping arrays extending out from the craft on its twin booms.

A boom arm extended fifty feet on either side of the Swift to allow for the surveillance of star systems considered potential targets for intelligent life. With an array of dishes and antenna jumbled together in a practical rather than an aesthetically pleasing manner, the Swift looked awkward. She was designed as a pre-contact reconnaissance vessel, intended to spy on any alien civilization detected by the large array on the Rift Valley.

Small enough and nimble enough to evade capture by anything man-made, the Swift was considered the first option in close surveillance, but she hadn't stood a chance against this alien war craft. The violent capture had snapped both boom arms, leaving the twisted wreckage of the antenna arrays crushed within the superstructure of the alien vessel.

Trixie watched as Berry examined the crushed array.

“We’re not going to be able to make contact with the Rift.”

Berry ran his hand along the side of the Swift as he clambered over the vines. The airlock was positioned forward of the engines. Trixie could see the excitement flooding back into him. His face lit up. His stride widened. His arms found new vigor.

“I'm surprised there aren’t any guards,” he said to her. “I guess they never thought we'd escape. Or they figure that if they caught us once, they can catch us again. But this time, things will be different. This time, we’ll forget about trying to outrun them, and use our lateral thrusters to out-maneuver them and hide from them. This old hunk of driftwood they command must steer like a brick. We'll deploy mimic decoys and get them chasing shadows. I think we can do this, Trix.”

Berry opened the airlock, a small circular hatch barely large enough to clamber through without a spacesuit, let alone while wearing one. He slid inside and opened the inner hatch, waving for Trixie to follow as he brought up the lights inside.

The airlock looked claustrophobic and cramped, but all things considered, it was better than being in the alien ship. Trixie climbed awkwardly inside.

“Pull on that lever to close the hatch,” Berry said, and Trixie complied.

Watching the metal hatch shut gave Trixie a feeling of being trapped, caught in a metal cage again, but Berry didn't seem fazed by the lock.

The light inside the cabin surprised Trixie. It didn't bother Berry, but she found herself squinting in the neon glow, overwhelmed by the intensity of the light, surprised by how it reflected off the white surfaces throughout the spaceship.

The inside of the Swift seemed small, much smaller than she remembered. There were glimpses, flashbacks rippling across her consciousness, images of different parts of the interior, but she struggled to grab hold of them. Her memories were fragile, fleeting fragments. The more she tried to remember, the more distant her thoughts became.

The first thing Berry did on entering the Swift was to slip on a singlet. He climbed over the central console, wriggling down into the pilot's seat. Trixie watched, fascinated by how difficult it was to move about the small cabin, but the craft had been designed for zero-gravity, where such movements would be more fluid and natural. Berry grabbed a stick of chewing gum. He twisted around in the cramped seat, wedged in between banks of switches, computer holo-monitors and keyboards. After a few preflight checks, he started the core systems.

Trixie leaned forward, squeezing between the bulkhead and the navigation console just as Berry had, looking intently at the cockpit. She could see the joysticks used to make course corrections in flight, the holo-monitors arrayed like windows around the cockpit and the touch-screen interface exposing dynamic controls.

Berry had a few personal effects dotted around his seat. A Bonsai plant in a shallow ceramic pot had been taped down on one side of the cockpit, its soil shrink-wrapped in clear plastic. Its tiny trunk and petite green leaves had been carefully sculptured to look like an acacia tree. Trixie wondered how long that would be kept around given the organic, tree-like structures within the alien spaceship and the horrors they evoked in her. She was sure Berry felt the same way. She couldn't imagine that well-groomed, miniature tree having quite the same appeal after this ordeal.

There was a color photo of Berry and his cat on the other side of the cockpit, taped on the edge of one of the monitors. The cat looked like it was a Burmese. Next to that, Berry had stuck a few scraps of paper with quotes on them. The letters were ornate. Trixie wondered what they said, but she couldn't read them. The words looked like symbols, meaningless scribble carefully arranged. They were clearly important to Berry.

“Gum?”

Trixie had no idea what gum was, but she accepted anyway. If it was good enough for Berry, she would happily give it a try.

Berry tossed her a stick of gum. She popped it in her mouth and chewed, surprised by the burst of flavors on her tongue. She didn't recognize the taste, but her mouth salivated for more.

“Nice, huh?” Berry said, bringing the engines online.

“Yes. Nice.”

“A blast from the engines and we should be able to break free,” he added.

Trixie backed out, away from the cockpit and into the general purpose area. She wondered how they had both fit into such a small craft. There seemed to be barely enough room for Berry, let alone her. The general area, beside the airlock, was covered in small removable panels. A couple of them were open, revealing the complex subsystems that controlled the Swift. A sleeping hammock hung vertically beside her. It was oriented such that it would only work in zero gravity.

Trixie was fascinated by the details around her. She was quite happy to let Berry figure out how to get them out of there, she wanted to explore the panels, to open all of them and see what lay behind them. Trixie was intensely curious about this new, small world.

“Something’s not right, Trix.” Berry said, looking at an image of workers swarming around the outside of the craft, ignoring it as they went about their business. “This makes no sense. Where are the thinkers? Why haven't they realized we've escaped? Why aren't they trying to stop us?”

Trixie could see Berry was hesitant about leaving and that surprised her.

“We go,” she said, with panic in her voice. “We run.”

She wanted this to be over with, to get away from the insects, to get as far away as possible.

“No. It's too easy,” Berry replied, his hand resting on the control panel.

“Go,” Trixie insisted, feeling she had a right to cast her vote.

Berry pushed off, sliding out of the command seat and twisting as his back slid on the navigation console. He turned around as he slid, so he could drop down gently beside her, making his dismount look easy. To Trixie, the cockpit was claustrophobic, but Berry was at home in the cramped quarters.

“We can't go, Babe. Not just yet.”

He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. From the look in his eyes, she could see he wanted to explain his thinking, not only to her but to himself.

“It's a setup, a trap, it has to be. You see, Trix, for all of their mind craft, their ability to tap into our thoughts and translate our thinking, they weren't able to find the Rift Valley. They know this is a scout ship, it's too small to be out here alone, so they figure there's a mother ship somewhere nearby, but they don't know where.”

He laughed.

“They don't know where because I don't know where, so when they read my mind, there's nothing there. They must think I'm dumb. It must be so strange for them, so alien to have a pilot that doesn't know his way home, but that's not the way we work.

“We humans delegate complex information processing to computers, letting machines handle the navigation between galactic spatial coordinates. But these guys have no such concept of computing. For them, everything is biological. It seems they never discovered the semi-conductivity of silicon and the ability to build complex logic gates into programmable machines. I guess they never had to, their prowess with biotech has meant they've never explored these mechanical possibilities. It must confuse the hell out of them to capture an explorer who doesn't know where he came from, so they're letting us go.”

“Go,” repeated Trixie, she'd struggled to follow his explanation, but she knew that word. She understood its meaning and she agreed. It was time to go.

“We can't go, Trix. They'll track us back to the Rift Valley, and from there they'll track the Rift back to Earth.

“Don't you see? They're pirates, strip-miners, conquistadors. They harvest the most precious commodity in the universe, life. They're after our genetic material, the knowledge of billions of years worth of Natural Selection stored within our DNA. And they mean to use it against us.”

Although Trixie was struggling to understand the concepts being described by Berry, she could see his eyes opening as his mind pieced the puzzle together.

“Trix, they're the reason for the silence. For centuries, we've stared at the sky and watched the heavens, listening to the stars, searching for the faintest trace of intelligent life, but there's nothing, nothing but silence. We thought we were special, that we were unique, the first form of intelligent life to reach out into local space, but we're not.

“We launched the Savannah, the Serengeti, and the Rift Valley, all to explore the cosmos, to find life, any life, but hopefully intelligent life, and finally we have. But it's a form of intelligence more brutal than our own. I know, because I've been inside their minds. They've already analyzed our DNA, using my DNA, your DNA, the DNA from the bacteria on our skin, from the microbes in our gut, from the dust mites in our hair, from the protein strands in our food, and they've pieced together not only our common ancestry, but our molecular rates of change to partially build our evolutionary tree of life. And they're hungry for more. For them, this is like discovering buried treasure.”

Trixie was lost in his words, mesmerized by his logic. Her eyes glazed.

“We thought we were unique, Trix. The first to arise out of stardust, but we're not, it seems we're the latest, perhaps the last. You don't shout in a jungle, babe. You stay quiet. But we've been blundering through the interstellar foliage making as much noise as we can, and that's dangerous. There are lions out there, leopards stalking in the dark.

“It's typical, really,” he continued. “We've always thought that creation was all about us, as though the universe revolved around humanity, but we're latecomers. We've arrived to find the party's already over.

“You see, intelligent life didn't flourish on Earth, it was suppressed, held back for hundreds of millions of years by terrible lizards. Well, the name is a misnomer, but the brutal dominance of dinosaurs suppressed the rise of intelligence. A big old T-Rex didn't need smarts to survive, just teeth and claws.”

Trixie got that. She bared her teeth and held up her hands, making claws with her nails, scratching at the air.

“Yes, that's it, Trix. Teeth and claws. So it seems the rest of the galaxy must have flourished around us while we were silent, awaiting the rise of intelligent apes.

“And that was quick, we went from swinging through the trees in packs, to building campfires for a tribe, all inside of a million years. From there, we went from gazing at the stars in wonder, to plowing through the heavens at close to the speed of light, all within a few thousand years. And the silence we found was not emptiness, it was devastation.

“These guys are worse than any carnivore or any acid-dripping monster we've ever imagined. They're not after our lives, they're not after our resources, they're after our genetic past. They mean to steal our future, to harvest it, to exploit it.”

“We run,” Trixie said.

She didn't understand. He held her face gently in his hands, saying, “Oh, Trix. If we run, we risk everything. They want us to run, they're counting on it. If we run, everybody dies.”

“We fight.”

“Yes. We fight.”

Berry searched through the maintenance cabinets in the Swift, pulling out a portable welding kit, a handheld spotlight and some nylon cord.

Trixie looked inquisitively at each object, realizing from their shape they held some specific purpose and would have to be used in a precise manner. She wasn't stupid, she was ignorant. Her intelligence craved understanding. She desperately wanted to soak up as much as she could from interacting with Berry. His every motion was the subject of intense scrutiny on her part—what he selected, what he chose to leave, how he handled each item, the way he checked equipment was in good working order. There were clues there for her, revealing the nature of these tools. She examined them quickly, making mental notes before placing them carefully on a bench beside her.

Berry handed her a pack of six acetylene cylinders, each no larger than her forearm, and she realized they contained something intended for consumption. Their identical brass-threaded heads indicated that they were interchangeable. Looking at the threads, Trixie could see how they would screw into something and immediately grabbed the portable welder, checking to see if they would fit into a similar brass fitting she'd observed on that device.

“Clever girl,” Berry said, watching her.

Trixie smiled, twisting the handle on the side of one of the cylinder heads. A viscous liquid bubbled up out of the neck of the cylinder, only it wasn't water. It was so cold it seemed to burn. Frost formed on the outside of the cylinder. Vapor and bubbles started seething as the liquid ran down the side of the metal cylinder, dripping on the floor.

“Oh, no. Turn that off,” Berry said, to which Trixie responded immediately, turning the handle back the other way.

“You've got no sense of caution, have you?” Berry mused aloud. “Smell that? That crisp, clean smell? That's dangerous, Trix. This stuff is heavier than air, so it pools low to the ground, at the lowest point. And if there's a spark. BANG!”

Berry clapped his hands in time with the word bang, and Trixie jumped in surprise, getting the message.

“Watch,” he said. Grabbing the welding kit he screwed in a smaller, blue cylinder, fitting it up inside the grip of the torch. “This is the pilot fuel. It's good for about an hour. Next you need a regulator.”

Berry screwed a small brass fitting into the bottom of the welding kit before attaching the cylinder Trixie had been holding.

“This regulates the flow of gas, controlling the rate at which the acetylene comes out of suspension.”

Trixie memorized every motion. Berry held the torch so she could see what he was doing.

“The trigger controls the flow of gas. This is the safety stop. Cylinder pressure shows up here. Green is good. Red means it's time to change cylinders. This button, on the side, fires the pilot light.”

Berry flicked the red button and a blue haze appeared at the tip of the torch. The sound of gas flowing excited Trixie. She could see how all the mechanical parts worked together to control something that seemed inherently uncontrollable and dangerous. Berry pointed the torch upwards, holding it out so she could watch as he squeezed the trigger. A burst of bright yellow flame shot out a foot above them, with black soot forming rapidly in the air as smoke.

“Oxygen rich. Makes for quite a show.”

“I like it,” Trixie said. Berry smiled, cutting the pilot flame and switching off the flow from the cylinder. Trixie's eyes were glued to his every move.

“OK, let's see what else we have to work with,” Berry said, putting down the welding torch.

Trixie put the spare cylinders carefully next to the welder and waited eagerly as Berry continued rummaging through the Swift's cargo hatches, each one built to maximize any available space in the bulkhead.

Berry pulled out a pneumatic rivet gun for repairing hull breaches and handed it to her along with some smaller green cylinders full of compressed air. Trixie looked carefully at the gun, noting how Berry held it by the grip, closely examining the trigger. It was similar to the welding torch. Even though it was smaller, it was bulky in her petite hands, being designed for use through the thick gloves of a spacesuit. She could see how the mechanics of it would work, with a belt-fed row of rivets passing up through the handle into an open breech. She couldn't imagine what it was used for, but she could picture how each of these rivets was intended to pass out through the barrel. Berry handed her a few more prepackaged strips of rivets.

“There's not much to work with,” he said. “But it's all I have. The Swift wasn't intended as a military vessel. There's no armament as such, to avoid any provocation, and certainly no anti-personnel weapons, but we've got to do something.

“Anderson knows the first contact protocols. He'll have taken the Rift deep, powering her down to hide her electromagnetic signature. She'll be running on silent. That old dog is probably sitting in the outer debris field around that nebula, blending in with all the junk. I know I would. And if he doesn't hear anything from us, if we fail to arrive at the rendezvous, he'll assume the worst and expect hostilities. But what can we do? We're damned if we stay, damned if we leave.”

Trixie looked content with her new toys, turning over one of the cylinders in her hand. Berry was talking to himself. “We can't flee, but we have to warn the Rift.”

Berry scratched the stubble on his chin, thinking aloud.

“We could fry our fusion cells. Remove the safety. It'll take them about a day to overheat. But when they go bang, it should have a yield of about twelve kilotons. It won't make too much of a dent in this thing, though. From what I could tell during the capture, it's the size of a small moon. And I suspect our newfound friends have already anticipated this as a possibility, as that would explain why they're sealing the tunnels and thickening the hull below us, but an explosion would give the Rift something to work with. Our guys will spot the detonation, they'll recognize the radioactive signature, and they'll pick up on these monsters long before they're flushed out of hiding.”

Trixie was smiling, but she hadn't understood what Berry was saying. Words were becoming clearer, taking on meaning, but he spoke so fast it was difficult for her to string the concepts together in her understanding.

“Boom, Trix. We'll make a big boom.”

Trixie understood boom. The onomatopoeic nature of the word resonated with her. She could instinctively hear the meaning in the sound. As the word left his lips, Berry gestured outward with his hands, starting with them in a tight ball and flinging his fingers outward, mimicking an explosion. Trixie liked boom. She smiled. Somehow she understood the violent term being pressed upon her, and it didn't frighten her. She felt excited at the thought of taking the initiative.

“Oh, Trix. I am so sorry. Your brief light will be too quickly snuffed out. Yours is an intelligence that will never bloom.”

He kissed her lips softly. She liked the way his lips lingered for a moment, one that, for her, could have stretched on into eternity. The bell hanging from her bracelet rang softly around them. Berry smiled. The delicate, high-pitched ring had been there all along, tinkling as she'd handled each tool, but it was only now he noticed. For her, it meant life, and he seemed to understand that. Trixie had no idea he was setting in motion her death.