Revolt

Prologue
New York City, Earth Date August 2010
     Skye lay awake on the last night before she left her home. She rolled onto her back and sighed. Her heart was racing with needless anxiety, and she’d had run to the toilet nine times that day having episodes of anxiety-induced IBS.
     Damn PTSD.
     She knew this is what she had to do.
     She knew why.
     She’d gotten into good schools in her city. She could stay in the city she loved, could have gone to Fordham or NYU and be closer to everything she knew. Skye loved New York. But she knew that she needed to get away. Living at home was too controlling, too reminiscent of what was taken from her. Sure, Skye’s mother had calmed down with the beatings, but there was still the element of I could be doing more, I am being weighed down that she felt. Also, Wesleyan had a better astrophysics program, with actual telescopes that wouldn’t be hindered by the glaring lights of the city. Sure, she’d be leaving a world of bustling activity that she loves more than she loves herself, but with it she’d be finding freedom. And it wasn’t as if she won’t be coming back nearly every other month for holiday breaks.
Skye had no way of knowing what was in store.

Portugal, Earth Date September 2010
     Mariana Almada gazed out her window one night, watching the fiery meteorite crash into the shores of the Gulf of Cadiz. She’d learned about meteorites in school, rocks from space that manage to hit the surface of the Earth. She did not, however, learn about the life that could be preserved inside the core of the rock she watched.
She had no way of knowing that she had just become the first human to see evidence of this life.

Interstellar medium, Milky Way Galaxy, Earth Year 2008
     She had escaped.
     She had lost everything.
     She was dying.
     She had killed all of them.
     She had killed them too quickly.
     They should have suffered, for what they did. For what they had done to those they needed to stay alive. For what they tried to force her to become. But they didn’t. They’d come after her, sentencing her to death, and she’d left their planet and they’d followed and she’d killed everyone who had come after her but she was fatally wounded.
She wouldn’t survive. Wounds like this don’t heal.
It would be better this way. Better she be dead than alive to hurt others for survival.

Atlantic Ocean, Earth Date September 2010
     The rock that had protected Revolt from burning up in the atmosphere had shattered to pieces. The first thing she noticed was molecules of oxygen, everywhere. They burned her already deteriorating flesh. I’ll die here, she thought, not because of the battle, not in war, but burned alive by the molecules that are everywhere in this planet. She’d left Klyntar to stop killing only to be killed by the death-planet she’d decided to land on.
     Not a death-planet. She saw a small life form maneuvering its way through the oxygen-rich fluid. Solid. She’d been hosted by several solid organisms before, she knew how to survive in one. She also knew that several of them were too fragile to survive hosting her.
     It’s not like she had much of a choice.
     Within seconds, she’d seeped into the creature’s solid scales, coursing through its body. Almost immediately the internal parts that kept it alive began to go haywire, first spiking in activity and then eventually shutting down completely. Electrical signals ceased.
     Oh well.
     She’d done it again.
     It was probably better she die here.
     Revolt drifted through the sea of oxygen, a dying blob of black and purple goo writhing in agony. Eventually she lost consciousness.  She waited for the darkness to swallow her.
     Her dumb instincts must have taken over, because when she came to, she was once again inside a solid Earth life form. She knew immediately that this one was much stronger, and biologically adapted to be carnivorous. That’s when she realized how hungry she was. Revolt couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything. A life form similar to the first host she’d taken since landing in this liquid death-world swam by.
     She swallowed it whole.
     It did nothing to satisfy her hunger.
     She found another one, larger this time.
     Still no satisfaction.
Revolt had no idea how long she’d been doing this, swimming across the body of death-fluid, deteriorating inside a deteriorating host that she needed in order to not be killed by her environment, eating and eating and still starving. She felt her strength waning. She needed to eat in order to heal from the injuries she’d sustained in battle.
     How many symbiotes had she killed? Single-handedly, with nothing but a brain-dead host? A hundred? Two? Three?
     It didn’t matter.  What did matter, however, is that her current host had just died on her.