Chapter 34
I recoil in terror from my reflection. What is happening? I can’t be this—this thing!
Some piece of my mind remembers I’m under hypnosis, and the word blueberry hovers on my lips. This can’t be real, it’s just a delusion, I can’t actually be in the body of a monster…
I saw a man turn into a gelatinous, tusked horror at Cleo’s. Others saw it, too. It was real.
This is real.
A door opens, and several more creatures like me enter what I now see is a small room.
In other circumstances, I might find them, if not beautiful, at least interesting to look at.
Their—our—chitinous exoskeleton is brilliantly colored, emerald green on the back fading to bright blue legs and then a scarlet belly.
The head is the same blue as the legs, and the trunk-like appendage on the front is banded with white and orange, shifting to crimson graspers at the tips.
“Welcome, traveler,” says a voice in my head.
I try to make some exclamation, but my mouth, tucked under the trunk, isn’t meant for vocalizations. The colors on my trunk flash and strobe, but I don’t know why.
“Be calm. We speak mind-to-mind. You will learn to as well.” A pause.
“Don’t be afraid. You won’t be harmed. You are simply a guest. Cooperate, do not hurt the body you are currently in, and we will place you with others of your species.
If you refuse to eat or try to harm this body, you will be restrained until your sojourn is at an end. ”
This must be a hallucination, brought about by the injection Hart gave me. It can’t be real.
Overwhelmed, I grasp at any branch held out to me. They said they won’t hurt me. I just need to cooperate.
“What are you?” I try to think at them.
It must work, because one says, “We are The Ones Who Become.”
It suddenly registers that we aren’t speaking some common language. This is simply how my mind interprets the thoughts they press upon it, and vice versa.
Before I have time to gather myself, the creatures guide me out the door. If I don’t pay attention to my new body, it seems to know how to move without trouble. But the moment I try to think about the motion of my many legs, they tangle.
The creatures aren’t impatient at my stumbles, so I use the time to try and look around through my greatly expanded vision.
The corridors are made from enormous blocks of stone and appear to have been painted with murals depicting the creatures in a variety of settings: a jungle, a ziggurat, alongside organisms that remind me of the dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History.
But all the murals are flaking away, as though they were painted generations ago. A few clumsy attempts seem to have been made to repaint them in places, but lack the genius of the original artists, reducing the intricate details to flat smears.
The building itself has been well-maintained, or at least what little I glimpse of it before my captors lead me through another door.
This one opens onto an enormous room, liberally decorated with stone couches with mossy beds.
More of the creatures stand clustered in groups, perhaps communicating telepathically with one another, while others sleep or stare out an enormous window that overlooks a forest of widely spaced trees.
Something enormous moves off in the distance, but I can’t make it out from here.
“These are your own kind,” says one of my captors. “They will teach you what to do.”
Then they’re gone, the door closed behind them. I stand still, shaken, unsure what to do next. Unsure if any of this is even real to begin with.
One of the entities already in the room breaks off its communion with two others and approaches. It moves slowly, as if not wanting to spook me. Once it’s about ten feet away, it stops and lifts its trunk in greeting.
“Welcome,” it says. “Though that isn’t really the right thing to say, since we’re captives here together. I know we don’t look it, but all of us are human, though from different times and places.”
Different…times?
“I know it sounds mad. But what could be any more mad than, well, this?” It indicates the room with its trunk, its mental voice wry.
“From what we can tell, judging by writings previous captives left behind here, various members of the Swarm projected their minds through the ages and somehow swapped bodies with us.”
This can’t be real. “The Swarm?”
“That’s what we call them. The Ones Who Become, if you want to use their name for themselves.” It makes a complicated wriggle that I think is meant to be a shrug. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s your name? I’m Bianca Giuliani.”