Endosymbiosis

25. Cells

"I wouldn't know what to do..." I gasped as tears started to stream down my face.

"I'll guide you."

"No..." I wasn't brave enough, smart enough, determined enough... How could I carry what should have been on the strength of her shoulders? How could I not be crushed under the weight of the world she could support? How would I save the Empire? "It can't be me..."

She grabbed my arms.

"There's no one else, Doxy... I know you're not part of some bigger plan; that you're not the missing piece in the puzzle of this Empire; and that you're not destined for greatness..." I blinked, trying to drive away the tears that clouded my vision. "But you can conquer it. The bigger plan can be yours; the puzzle can be your mind; and the greatness can be you... All that remains is to become it." I choked on words I never said, struggling not to ask how she could believe that when I was so far from the woman she was. "They don't know about you. Go to the intergalactic hospital as far from the core as possible and hide the name Gaxy for a while." She brought the needle closer to my arm that I no longer had the strength to withdraw. "Do not look back. Trust no one. Don't give up... And never forget who you are, Doxy. Never forget that you are a Gaxy."

And then her fingers squeezed the ampoule, injecting the cure into my veins.

The burning that exploded in my arm felt like I'd plunged it into the depths of the sun. I screamed until I felt the veins in my neck trying to escape it and I struggled in my mother's embrace, holding me as the universe collapsed inside. I felt the responsibility migrate beneath my skin like molasses, tearing me apart and rebuilding me so that I was big enough to carry it. I could feel it in my arms, invading my neck, making me into its extension, until I was nothing without it...

And when the light I had seen in the sky reached our house and blew it out, a sound like the roar of beasts filled my ears... But I didn't know if it came from the cries of the cracking walls, from my own throat, or from something far beyond, warning me of an end almost worse than the one I felt inside me.

At some point in eternity the wave of the cure exploded in my head and my eyes were filled with darkness, pain and fear. I saw colossal beasts march over the precipices of the universe, advancing from rips that shouldn't be there... I saw a lady of bones laughing at me before pores of blood...

And I saw the end.

An end I needed to face.

As I writhed on the cold floor, I watched my mother walk through the shelter door into the rubble of what was once my home.

And I never saw her again.

• • • ֍ • • •

Rumors that the humans were planning an escape from the Oasis eventually reached the attention of those who weren't supposed to know. Some of the humans began to be called by supervisors to private meetings that nothing was said about afterwards. I had no idea what happened inside, I only saw the paleness on the faces of the other humans when they left the room... Until it was my turn.

I closed the door behind me and the tremulon said before I could even turn around:

"Gaxy is alive."

And, easy as that, I was already as pale as those who left that room.

I slowly turned back to the tremulon, expressionless as jelly, and felt my mind burn with questions I didn't dare ask. I hadn't even heard her name in so long... A sound that now seemed to be able to summon ghosts buried in my past.

"Someday she wasn't?"

"I heard rumors. But they were wrong, apparently."

"How do you know?"