Endosymbiosis

7. Proteasome

"The galaxy's core."

And I would give it to her.

Or else I would die.

There was no longer a way to escape. The more I stared at her, the more she became a snake, enveloping me, trapping me, Asclepius's own serpent coiling around my neck to empty me of all air... Until there was nothing left in me but the memory of her face with that smirk that seemed to know everything.

When the bus arrived at its destination, I managed to breathe...

For a while.

• • • ֍ • • •

"What's the plan?" The iatric asked, as soon as we got off the bus.

"We search for the ship, get in and flee."

"So easy?" She could not trust what was not impossible.

"The Empire does not usually insist on protecting garbage." But other groups did. And if we were discreet, we wouldn't have to deal with them.

We approached one of the control panels on the electric fence around the landfill and I plugged in my enhancement, turning off the electricity so we could get inside. I climbed over the fence, and when I was at the top, I thought about offering to help the iatric up, but she was already on the other side, tense and hurried as if she couldn't wait for us to be out of this situation she had no control over.

"Don't worry. You have a fevino on your side."

She sent me a sharp look, like I was just making the situation worse.

"I worry when things are tough." She muttered. "Not when they're too easy." Something told me she was always worried.

At that moment, I caught sight of a silver pendant on the horizon, gleaming in the blue sunlight like a blade cutting through the layers of sky. Its bullet shape hit me between the eyes and its intact glass reminded me of what I hid inside: a piece of me so big that there was almost nothing left on my feet. It was as beautiful as a work of art, as perfect as a concept, as powerful as...

Was that a scratch?!

At those times I wanted the fevino to emerge at my command, just to scratch those responsible for that crime.

I heard the quick footsteps of the iatric behind me and then realized I was running toward the ship, down the empty corridors among the mountainous piles of abandoned junk... Completely exposed. And such an easy target.

When the first beam shot toward us, I flew over the iatric, rolling our bodies close to a pile of garbage that served as a shield.

"What was that?!" She snarled as I held her in place under my body before she could jump into the crosshairs of another beam.

"Damn it... Now they know we're here."

"They who?!"

"The collectors."

• • • ֍ • • •

The Empire chose to destroy, and the collectors, a group of several species that lived in landfills and took what they could, chose to save. But, in that constant war for buried treasure, they ended up losing patience for intruders.

"Will they kill us?" She whispered.

"I'd be surprised if they didn't try."

I backed away from the iatric, my eyes replacing hers with the ship. It was being pulled by chains to a launch pad in the nearby sun, where collectors discarded things that were of no value to them - or that were chests too difficult to open. They wouldn't throw my ship away if they knew what it was holding... But they hadn't been able to find out.

"It would be nice to have a plan now..." She muttered and I rolled my eyes.

"They're taking the ship." I pointed to the platform, overrun with collectors, some searching the piles for treasure, others patrolling the region with stolen weapons to kill intruders who threatened their fragile order. "We need to go fast."

The iatric plunged her hands into the junk, while she practically thought aloud:

"There are human collectors, right?" I confirmed, without much confidence. "So we just need to blend in." She tossed me a piece of brown fabric so I could somehow turn it into a disguise.

"They're more organized than you're thinking." She watched me from the corner of her eye, rolling over her head the pants of a being with many legs. "Each species is like a tribe and they're always fighting for control of the landfill. You need to go through an initiation process to at least be accepted at the base of the pyramid. They don't accept anyone."

She was silent for a moment, processing my words only to ask what I didn't expect:

"How do you know all that?" My silence was an answer. "Have you been a collector before?"

And in her eyes I saw a definition of collector that wasn't strange to me: flies, feasting on droppings and fighting over the biggest pile of garbage to deposit their larvae. I couldn't blame her for thinking that; if it had been my choice, I too would have spent my life at the top of the food chain. Too bad we were both at the bottom now.

"I didn't go through the initiation."

So I covered myself with the fabric like a hood and walked to the launch pad.