Chasing Orion

As my vision began to clear, I was back in my room again. The door was open this time and the barrier appeared to be down. A sharp throbbing pain shot through my body and settled in my head. I sat up from the table rubbing at my eyes that felt like acid was covering them.

Just as before, I could feel the pain start to subside, but this time I knew why. In fact, I knew and understood everything. I looked around the room quickly recognizing furnishings and objects that I could not before.

Paintings of a bulky male alien that I knew to be Supreme Commander Zifay’tuj, a Naktahin royal guard commander that led a twenty-ship armada against the Durolin swarm invasion over two thousand years ago in an area of space around the star Rigel. He is a legend amongst a vast number of militaries and worlds.

His tactics and strategies have become required learning for half of the galaxy and to the Orionak, the species of the gods. The empire worshipped him as a type of father figure. I admit I was a little disturbed about how much I knew now removing the mystery, but in a way, I started to become relieved as I thought about it.

It all made sense now. The sun, the stars, chemistry, biology, government, space travel, electricity, quantum fields, dimension drives, wormholes, weaponry...all of it made sense.

I thought about the gods and my home and felt a mixture of betrayal and enlightenment. On one hand, the Orionak have let us worship them to the point of a religion, with sacrifices of innocent people in their name, when they are merely just another form of intelligent life in the universe.

They are vastly more evolved and have superior technology, but that is all they are. There were hundreds of other species just like them. They never told my people who and what they really were and hid behind the guise of costumes to conceal the truth from us. Then on the other hand, I understood their reasoning for doing so.

Telling us the truth would ultimately contaminate the natural evolution of our species, which is not to say that they are not changing it, given their interference and past relocation of our species but to take a species from digging in the dirt to space flight, is too large of a leap.

They believe in letting some things evolve naturally with little interference or stimulation. Instead they are focusing on creating outside of the box thinking and serving as platforms for creative thinking.

The pyramids for example are not of their design, they helped with the influence for the geometry and calculations but otherwise human action purely drove it.

I looked around my room some more understanding at all the objects and hidden panels on the walls that were no longer invisible to me. I got up and adjusted my uniform using the belt turning my suit into something more reflecting of what I really was.

I chose to mimic the armor worn by Ra but with some slight modifications to its color and texture. His armor was golden with blue accents, and mine is pure black like the Ut’ari that attacked me.

Understanding how the belt worked being able to modify my appearance with my thoughts, I also made my armor have a shifting texture like the interlocking scales of a snake that bend and flex with the movement of its body.

It made the black shimmer ever so slightly as calm water would in the moonlight. As I sculpted the appearance in my mind, the armor shifted and contorted around me adapting to my thoughts.

For my mask, I wanted something that was not very large but would still incite fear into those who witnessed it. I tried a few animals out like a tiger and a bear, and then I remembered the other billion creatures and animals I now knew about.

Using something unfamiliar was also a good idea because it would not force my people to relate me to something they knew and hopefully not think of me as a god in that falsity. I decided to adapt my mask to resemble the Ut’ari that attacked me.

It had human like facial features; eyes, nose, mouth, but its ears were sharp and pointed like a wild dog, and the bones of its face were very pronounced and made the ridges on its face come to peaks instead of rounded out.

The closest thing really that anyone could familiarize it with would be with a cave bat. I could not fly, and I did not have sonar in that sense, but it was grotesque enough once blended with human features.

My necklace obeyed my thoughts and sculpted the mask around my face while the armor adjusted and connected to the mask seamlessly. I completed the ensemble with a long flowing black cape that I never saw any of the others wearing which helped to further separate me from their status.

I waved my hand over the wall by the small table and a data console slid out from the wall. Within a few seconds, I knew the location of all the gods, more particularly Isis. Just the thought of her started to fuel my aggression and desire to attack her.

My skin got hot and all I wanted to do now was go find her. I knew why now however, and in a few seconds, I was calm again. I guess I could control it after all, or at least suppress it from my thoughts. Being in physical proximity could be another challenge.

The Ut’ari feed on the energy of our bodies. When it becomes a solid form, it has the craving to feed on the blood of its prey, since the blood is life. I had that craving now as well. I needed blood. Blood while it is still fresh and alive.

It had a slight arousing quality to it as well and the mere thought of it made me salivate uncontrollably. Like food, blood had different flavors and levels of quality. Isis had the best blood. It was clean, pure and overflowing with her essence.

I could smell it seeping through her pores when I first awoke. Now I had to have it, but I did not want to harm her. My human side still felt compassion and drive for peace, but the Ut’ari side had intense rage and aggression that was now fighting inside me to break free.

I took several deep breaths, turned down my rage to a slow simmer, and ventured out into the hallway. I sniffed the air to pick out the best path toward the scent of Isis. The guards shifted nervously in their stances not knowing what was going to happen.

Overall, they had the right to be nervous given what I can do to them, and I was curious if even they knew the absolute truth about what I was. I took the forked passageway heading in the direction of Isis’s scent.

People going about their normal duties crowded the hallways. They all took immediate notice to me and most of them seemed terrified to see me walking about, jumping to the side or quickly moving out of my path. It was like water breaking around a rock moving through the halls.

After a few minutes, I came to a single door where the metal on it and around it was more solid than the rest of the ship. It was smoother and poorly reflected the hallway behind me.

I waved my hand over the doors control panel but it did not open and made a low garbled tone. I tried it again but it had the same result. Using my new knowledge, I pushed at the panel and a small door opened in the wall with a layer of pictograms.

I quickly tapped a few of them and the door opened turning translucent. I went inside and the door sealed behind me. The guards inside the room reluctantly grabbed ahold of me for my trespassing.

In one motion, I flung them both backward against the wall and they crumbled to the ground unconscious.

I took a few steps forward and then paused in awe of what I was looking at. I was standing on a type of platform that was protruding out into the room; it was the bridge of the ship.

The front of the bridge was transparent like massive windows wrapping around to the sides. A level below me was another platform with two rows of panels and displays with Sah stationed at each panel.

In front of me, the platform took a few steps upward to two sets of half-moon consoles with an intricate capsule at each one of them containing the pilots, and in front of them, the platform spread out to a balcony that traced along the whole front of the ship.

Isis and Osiris were standing at the front of the ship looking out and Hathor was down below talking to one of the Sah commanders. I started to make my way across the bridge toward Isis. I could feel my urge to kill rise to the surface as her scent consumed me.

Isis remained facing forward staring out onto the curvature of Earth. Osiris took notice of my advance and turned raising his hand. I stopped in my tracks. Isis turned her head slightly in acknowledgement of my presence but never looked at me. As quickly as I stopped, Osiris was in front of me. He quietly whispered down to me without breaking composure,

“You must learn to control your thoughts and emotions. In any other circumstance, I would let her handle you on her own, but I do not want you two to break the ship. Little secret, she wants to fight you, do not provoke her. Control yourself.”

She wants to fight me. I processed that statement for a few moments while my rage subsided.

“How can I control it? Her scent is overwhelming compared to everyone else’s,” I whispered back to him.

A female voice came from behind me much more commanding and gruff than I would have expected,

“By knowing that you have eternity to find out what her blood tastes like. No need to rush it, there is plenty of time.”

Her words oddly enough made sense to me. My skin cooled down and my pulse started to slow. I still had the craving but it was no different from having a hunger for good food and was manageable. I noticed the smell of everyone else as my focus from Isis dropped. Blood was blood to me, but now being able to smell it, everyone had different blood flavored to his or her experiences. I also noticed my other senses had become greatly amplified.

I could hear everyone’s heartbeat and even focus in on one with some concentration. The other smells began to emerge too such as plastic, metal, dirt, food, and the differences between male and female in both the Orionak and the Sah.

Then the human scents hit me, it was a brand-new smell, but I could immediately recognize it as being human, and slightly more appealing. I then started to analyze the differences among the Orionak. Osiris could hear my thoughts. Could all of them?

“No, just me,” Osiris said with a smirk. “Each of us as we grow up chooses specific paths of our education that can teach us different special traits that will aid us in our endeavors as adults. I for example was born into a cast for leadership.

My ability to obtain one’s thoughts gives me immediate knowledge of deception, obedience, and intentions of those under my command, and my adversaries. Knowing what your enemies are going to do, has tremendous value on the battlefield.”

He motioned for me to follow him toward Isis.

“Hathor being an intelligence officer chose stealth as one of her attributes, hence why you did not hear or sense her approach up behind you until after the fact. She is the ultimate infiltrator, able to move silently across any surface by hovering a few inches above it.”

We walked up the ramp to the front platform and I stopped a few feet behind Isis. Osiris joined her side.

“May I officially present to you my wife, Isis, queen and leader of the fourth Vorin of the Orionak Sovereignty.”

I bowed slightly not knowing what else to do. She did not respond or even acknowledge her introduction from Osiris. She just stared out at the stars.

I will admit that her ignoring me made me annoyed. For a moment, I had the inclination to test my abilities and give her the reason to fight me. Osiris, studying every thought I had, got a troubled look on his face and glared at me with disappointment. I pushed his tolerance and took the thought deeper running a scenario in my head with me launching an attack and everyone dyeing ending with me sucking every drop of blood out of Isis’s body as she fought wildly against my grasp with my hands exploring the secrets of her body.

I could hear Osiris heartbeat speed up rapidly as I forced him to watch my thoughts. He clenched his fists together and made a move to strike at me. Just as before, everything slowed down to a crawl.

Osiris took a deep breath and exposed his teeth in anger. He tilted backward to lunge and two things happened simultaneously in that instant. First, Isis’s hand smashed against Osiris’s chest holding him in place, and secondly, I was flying backwards through the air again.

I stared at them as things passed by slowly, confused and in shock of what was happening. Isis slowly turned halfway to watch me fly backwards across the bridge and slam into the massive column supporting the bulkhead of the bridge.

It took a few seconds for my vision to clear and my mind to be able to think again. Hathor was knelt next to me pretending to help me to my feet, but she seemed hesitant to touch me.

“What happened?” I asked her halfway slurring my words as if intoxicated.

“Simply put. You upset Osiris and Isis defended him teaching you another lesson. Not a good first impression Ut’ari,” she said gliding slowly back away from me.

I got my footing and stumbled back up the platform. Osiris had his head bowed down on his chest and breathing slowly, while Isis had her hand pressed to him, which was emitting a pulsing blue light, illuminating his chest.

I felt horrible for what I just did to him. He has been nothing but patient and kind to me and I let him watch me do that to his wife. What little humanity that still lived inside me flooded my emotions and I dropped to my knees disgusted with myself.

I thought of my mother and sisters, not knowing what happened to me. I knew my father would be out searching the streets and neighboring encampments for my whereabouts.

Could I, would I, ever be able to see them again? Would I ever get to go back at all for that matter? Would I want to, knowing that I would most likely just want to kill them? If I went back, I would be more dangerous than the Orionak or Sah put together.

Maybe this was the intention though. If the Orionak were here to make me, then now that I was here, what need would they have for the rest of the humans? If the Ut’ari could pass himself along through his bite to me, then could I do that in turn to someone else?

Maybe that was the goal. Set me loose to annihilate my species by creating a new one. I could not though. How could I kill everyone I knew and cared for? How could I want to be an abomination that is full of so much hate and rage?

Isis interrupted my thoughts abruptly by grabbing hold of my shoulder. She was very formally kneeling beside me with her hand firmly ahold of my shoulder. I stared into her eyes as I did on the night of my transformation. That same intoxicating luminance burned in the colors of her eyes as she stared back at me.

“You must accept what you have become. You and only you have the power to decide what path it is you follow. The entity living inside you is slave to your will. You must accept yourself if you are ever to control the monster within,” she said to me in a delicate whisper.

Her words echoed through my mind as if she had yelled them. She was right. If I were ever to have a chance to see my family again, I would have to control this. My impulses are far too dangerous.

“I am sorry, to you both,” I said getting to my feet, extending my hand to Isis to help her up as well.

Osiris hesitantly took a step toward her defensively, but she had already taken my hand. She rose and joined Osiris at his side. The door to the bridge opened and Ra entered with a small escort of regular guards with him.

Isis gracefully walked over to a console and began inputting data to the terminal. Two of the pilots began swiveling around in their capsules moving and swiping away images and keying pictograms.

The ship began to slowly rotate and drift toward Earth. I could feel it moving under my feet and hear the hum of the engines spooling up to move the ship. I held both my hands out with palms facing the floor feeling the air. Ra came up the ramp behind me confused at what I was doing.

“You can feel the ship moving, can’t you?” Isis asked holding out her own hand.

“Yes, can’t you?” I replied looking at the others.

Everyone somewhat secretly held out their hand checking to see if they felt anything.

“Curious,” Osiris stated placing his hand on one of the platform columns.

It was an odd sensation feeling the change in the inertia. The ship had internal systems that controlled the inertia and gravity but my heightened senses allowed me to detect imperfections in the system.

“I want to go back down to the surface. I want to see my family,” I declared looking at Isis and Osiris.

Isis turned away from me looking back out the front windows at the Earth as it was coming into view.

“That would not be a very good idea,” Osiris replied throwing a glance to Ra. “You haven’t learned to control anything about yourself yet. If you go down to the surface you will hurt someone.”

Deep down I knew he was right, but that did not dissuade my desire to go back to my home.

“I say we take him down there and let him learn,” Ra interjected. “If he wants to kill his own people then I say let him.”

Ra was clearly still bitter about our previous encounter.

“I wouldn’t hurt my own people. Besides I only seem to attack those of weak character,” I retorted looking down at Ra’s leg.

That infuriated him and he reached for his sword and moved toward me to draw and strike. I could hear Hathor let out a quiet laugh to herself in amusement. I did not really acknowledge his advance until he was right in my face. I stared back into his eyes and grinned.

“You know you’d lose, God,” I said focusing my attention back out the window.

Isis turned back around to face us clearly unamused.

“Take him down to the surface, let him learn to control his new self with his own people,” Isis ordered Ra, who nodded in compliance turning to leave the bridge.

“Accept and control Ut’ari. We will be watching,” Osiris followed joining Isis at the console.

The guards formed up behind me and we trailed behind Ra leaving the bridge and heading down to the lift. The lift dropped down onto the hangar deck of the ship where dozens of small fighter-type spacecrafts in formation sat on the flight deck, each one of them armed with several different types of weaponry.

Running along the ceiling were countless rows of smaller drones serving as defensive weapon platforms for defense of the ship.

Thousands of them faintly pulsated blue light while waiting on standby for a command. In a way, it resembled looking up at the stars. How I knew all this was again startling me, but I knew about everything in the hangar, even how to pilot the crafts.

We silently made our way to one of the regular dropships that my people had become familiar seeing. Ra so far had not been much for conversation, and I did not even think the Sah could speak. I had so many things I wanted to ask him, mostly about our initial encounter and my wounding of him.

We boarded the ship and I instinctually made my way to the cockpit, sat in the co-pilots capsule, and began to prepare the ship for launch, starting up the engines and plotting our flight path and re-entry calculations into the computer.

The dropships were set up in a similar design to the mother ship. They had a fully open viewport in the front controlled through the translucent barriers.

Ra sat down at the command console and began to key the pictograms on the display. He paused and looked over to me as the co-pilot stood hesitantly beside me confused at what to do.

I laughed sheepishly to myself, apologized slinking out of the capsule allowing the pilot to assume his duties and joined Ra at his side looking over his shoulder. He paused again looking at me annoyed.

“You will want to change your attire to blend in with your own people Ut’ari. You shouldn’t associate yourself as one of us if you are to ever have a chance of fitting in with your own.”

I took a few steps back and thought about what he said. Do I even want to fit in with my own people? I was not human anymore in the end. I had no people now.

Part of me knew that it would be best to avoid them because once my craving reached a level I cannot control anymore they would satisfy my craving. Maybe the Orionak were counting on that happening, so they can study more Ut’ari. Realistically we were nothing in the grand scheme of the universe it seems. A single drop of water in the vast ocean of life.

The dropship slowly departed from the hangar and began descending through the atmosphere. We dropped under a low cloudbank out over the water and made our way towards land.

With only a thought, my suit changed to fit the traditional type of clothing a low-class worker would have been wearing, but my skin tone was to gray and dark compared to the bronze tan that everyone else is.

When concentrating on the skin color I should have been, my skin fluttered briefly and then changed color to match my thoughts. I concentrated again and my skin changed to a light blue exactly as I wanted.

For several minutes, I practiced changing my skin tone and eventually had it to where I could copy the surrounding items around me like a camouflage, blending the colors to mimic them perfectly. As we made landfall I shifted back to the tan I needed and looked out across the unfamiliar landscape we were flying above. It was a vibrant green dense jungle. Coming from Egypt I had never seen such a place. We had trees and foliage around the Nile but nothing that was remotely close to this.

The ship took a soft bank to the left and we began to slow down as we approached a large clearing in the canopy of trees. It was a city unlike any I had seen before with everything made of dark gray and black stones.

There were several large pathways crossing over themselves heading different directions and at least a dozen step pyramids about half the height of ours. The largest area had thousands of people with tents and a canopy covering what I assumed was a market place or trade district.

Several aqueducts lined the sides of the pathways going off to the pyramids. Gold covered most of the pyramids, the largest one at the center of the square covered in its entirety. It was beautiful to say the least. Off to the side of the large pyramid nested against it was an Orionak dropship.

“Where are we?” I asked leaning forward more to look down.

Ra tapped on his console and a large holographic image appeared on the frontal barrier depicting earth. It had all the continents displayed with several small blue dots at various places across the globe. A smaller green outline of the dropship appeared flashing with technical data appearing above it. It was our ship, and we were over what is now southern Mexico, I would say along the northern twenty latitudes, and heading northeast.

“And where am I from?” I asked, moving closer to the image of Earth.

The image spun around quickly and a crosshair centered on Giza, Egypt. The image zoomed in and turned into a picture from above.

I could see everything, the Pyramids, Sphinx, palaces, markets and my home. The image continued to zoom in and rotated down to a few feet above the ground showing the front of my house. I could see my mother and sister through the side window preparing dinner.

She paused and looked out the window as though she could see me. My human emotions flooded back into my consciousness and I missed my family.

Since my father was rarely home until late at night from working the pyramid, my mother was the person who taught me everything about the world and people.

How could I have been so selfish to allow something like this to happen to me? Moreover, my sister, although we fought constantly and verbally hated each other, I loved her more than I loved anyone else. She was always there to keep me off balance and in turn on the right paths.

Then there was my father. He worked if they allowed him to so he could provide for us. He was a difficult and firm man, but he never stopped caring for us. He taught me the most important lessons in life about respect, honor, duty, and family. I looked up to him. I wanted to be him, confident and unafraid of the world.

What was I doing? How could I ever go back to them? I felt that maybe it would be better not to go back. The person they knew was gone. I was not the same. I was dangerous and violent. In the heat of anger fighting with my sister, I could hurt her, badly.

That thought was the final nail in the coffin. I was not going back, but they had to know that so they could at least have peace in not waiting for me to come back anymore. I knew it would hurt them, but I also knew that it kept them safe. This is who I was now. My life would be different. Effectively I am an alien in a world manipulated by other aliens.

The Orionak at least had a place amongst one another, but I was alone in what I was. Showing up to tell my parents in person also would not be a great idea because how could I possibly explain it to them. A hundred bad ideas came to mind on how to go about something like this and then it hit me. The Pharaoh.

Khafre works for me now or at least would do as I told him. He was just a pawn of the Orionak. I could have him send an official message stating my indoctrination into service of him. The guards would never grant my parents access to the palace, and they might rest easier.

The ship took a steep dive and circled one of the pyramids stopping just above one of the Sah platforms. I felt the ship drop its pressure and a change in its weight.

Something clearly left the ship. I concentrated on my new senses and within a few moments, I could visualize a small squad of Sah dropping down onto the platform from the ship carrying two large crates.

The ship re-pressurized and began to lift upward; we rotated more to the northeast and accelerated to an incredible speed. The water and the ground zipped by so fast that were I to be human now, it would just be a blur. A few minutes passed and the ship slowed as the terrain changed back to the tan sandy hue I was accustomed.

We made a low pass over the Nile approaching the Necropolis from the south. The ship slowed over the normal landing platform and we waited.

Down below, the Sah herded the people away from the area and gathered into formations awaiting our arrival. The ship touched down effortlessly and the passenger door opened. A small contingent of guards marched out into the streets and the elite guards took positions alongside the down ramp preparing for Ra’s arrival.

Ra got up from his seat and shifted into the ceremonial armor that he normally appeared to us in. We made our way to the back of the ship to the doorway and I paused taking in all the smells and sounds of the city, working to calm my mind and maintain control.

Ra turned, handing me a small golden rod adorned in various Orionak inscriptions with a central blue gem near the top that pulsed ever so slightly.

I ran my thumb over the gem and the rod sprang to life transforming into a magnificent golden sword that was clearly alien in design and artistry.

“Remember who and what you are. Remember what you have learned. These people will worship you and think of you as a god, do not let them down Ut’ari,” Ra said to me before exiting the ship.

I ran my thumb over the gem again and it turned into a staff just as intricately designed as the sword was. I turned it back into a sword changing its color to match the black of my armor accented in the seemingly standard blue of the Orionak and sheathed it at my side.

Part of me understood what he meant, and the other part revolted the idea of pretending to be a god to my people. On the other hand, if I did not go along with the charade, chances are that the Orionak would have to kill everyone that stopped being compliant to their orders.

We are their experiment after all. I knew that deep down inside I did not want that to happen, but down on the surface, my feelings just did not matter.

In fact, I liked the idea of seeing everyone slaughtered. This thought was new. It felt right though, and it was not anger or rage. It was just the joy of seeing others in despair.

The more I thought on it, the more it felt like the correct feeling. It had to be the Ut’ari making me this way. Taking over more of who I was and replacing it with its own cruelty and evil. The problem is that it was effective. I shook off the thoughts and started to follow Ra out of the ship.

A draft of air blew inside the ship and wrapped around me like a sheet. A glorious scent overwhelmed me and I could think of nothing else.

My instincts kicked in and focused in on the scent. It was coming from a young servant girl holding a bucket of water. She was perfect, and I found her scent to be intoxicating. Out of the thousands of people outside, that scent stood out like the sun.

I leaned back against the wall of the ship trying to keep myself on balance but everything else around me just went away and I could only think about her. Horrific and terrible scenarios ran through my head as to what I wanted to do to her, things that people have never imagined before. It was disturbing but so desirable to do all of them.

Ra must have sensed that I was losing control because the next thing I felt was his hand pressed into my chest and an intense burning. Reality snapped back in and now the pain was searing through my whole body.

My chest started to glow a dark red under his hand and steam was starting to come off my armor. He stopped and lowered his hand almost in surprise, as if he was expecting that to kill me or at least knock me down.

“Control yourself. Or Isis will put you down!” he barked at me heading back out the ship.

I took a deep breath trying hard to ignore the urge of the scent that burned in my memory. I changed my armor to be like the others Earth styles and created my own elaborate god mask.

The mask blocked all the scents making it much easier to concentrate on just making it out of the ship. I stood in the doorway of the ship observing out over to what used to be my home then headed down the ramp behind Ra.