Taming the Queen of Beasts

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*****

RIKA

Rika wasn't sure what she'd expected when Gar said his sister was Queen, but it wasn't a woman younger than herself—and somehow older at the same time. She hadn't expected this sheer force of personality.  She hadn't expected to feel afraid of her eyes.

Elreth stared at the Scanner vacantly, while Rika cleared her throat then began to point to certain buttons and settings on it.

"This is the human answer to the Anima senses," she said, pointing to the display. "If you turn it on, it will show any living being as a heat source. And it can scan for close to a mile. That means when we sit in our camp and you send your team in, we know they're coming well before they reach us. We can see them move."

"Bullshit," Elreth said through her teeth.

Rika pressed her lips together, but punched a button on the scanner to start it and tapped the settings on the screen. "Take a look for yourself."

At first, Elreth clearly didn't understand what she was looking at—a ring of dark blue and green, but moving red and orange bodies among it. But then she turned to ask Tarkyn to look, and as she did so, the scanner's imagery shifted as well. She ended up with a view of both the elders around her, and apparently some Anima walking the path outside.

Elreth froze. Then she shoved the unit into the white-haired man's hands and ran for the door, yanking it open to look down the trail outside. She froze again, staring out the door, obviously able to see the people passing that had shown on the screen. Rika waited for her to slowly close the door and return to stand in front of her.

The man she'd handed it to was still watching the screen, and pointed a few things out to her. Their lips moved, but Rika couldn't hear what they said. But the man held her gaze for a long moment, looking… sympathetic? Then he glanced at Gar and back at her.

The woman shook her head and turned back to face Rika.

"Do they all have these units? All the humans?"

Rika shook her head. "As far as I know, that's the only one we had. It's a new technology. But it means that when the time comes and they send more people through, they will likely have many of them, yes."

"Send more through, when?" she snapped.

"I don't know."

"Liar."

Gar bristled next to her, but Rika knew she was telling the truth, and no matter how harsh his sister might be, she couldn't do any better than that—and she had to pray these people would realize it with time.

"I'm not lying. My job was to research. To collect information. To prepare. I was expecting to be doing that for another two or three months. But I was also expecting to be doing that alone for at least another month. The fact that the others showed up early… either they figured out that I wasn't sharing everything anymore, or they've brought their timeframe forward. But it really doesn't matter in the end, does it? Unless you find a way to stop them, whether it's next month, or next year, they're coming. And they're going to destroy you."

"Let them try," the woman snarled. "We will fight!"

"You won't get a chance to with tools like that. Don't you get it? They're preparing ahead so they can come and take you alive. They aren't going to give you warning. They aren't going to announce war and rush your city. They're preparing traps for you. Ways to capture you—and kill any that they can't subdue."

"Capture us? Why?!" Elreth demanded, leaning into Rika's face. Gar growled and the white-haired man held her arm, but she ignored him.

So did Rika. "Because they want to study you. They want to pick you apart and figure out how you're so strong, and your senses are so heightened. They want to… copy you. They want to turn humans into you—or at least, give the humans what you have that makes you different. Better. Any portion of humanity that can learn how to do that… if they combine your strengths with their technology… they'll be unstoppable."

"Unstoppable in what?!"

"In our world. They will take over our world—which is much, much bigger than this one. They want to use you—to heal themselves, to make themselves better, and to conquer their world. After they conquer this one."

"We will not be conquered!"

"Then you'll die. It's that simple. If you don't find a way to stop them getting here, they'll take who they can, and kill the rest."

"Why?! We have never hurt them. Never caused them any problems."

"Because you're a threat," Rika said, her mind turning back to the few meetings on strategy that she'd been a part of.

Before she'd observed these strong, proud people, she hadn't really cared. Had thought of them as animals—a resource to be observed and exploited. Not cruelly. But without conscience. Like farming sheep.

Except, as soon as she'd gotten here… when she'd observed their intelligence and their strength. When she'd met Gar and seen his character…

Her entire view of the world—and her life—was changed. Because if the people she worked for could talk about slaughtering these people—and they were people—like they would a cow for dinner… that wasn't something she wanted to be a part of.

But she hadn't known how to leave the work without creating a greater risk for the Anima. So she'd stayed.

A niggling thought in the back of her mind suggested perhaps she'd stayed as much for Gar as for the Anima in general. But she pushed it away.

Elreth's eyes widened and she stood back. Everyone was silent, the faces in the room ranging from sad, to terrified.

She cleared her throat and met Elreth's eyes. "You have to understand, you aren't humans to them," she said quietly, apologetically.. "You're cattle." 

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