Chapter Text
“Hello… Miss… Uh, Nora,” Companion Marco Guerra mumbled. “May I please speak to my father?” He reminded Prof. Nora Robinette-Guerra something of a child, the way he didn’t meet her eyes directly and kept awkwardly shifting his weight as he stood before her primary entryway, his shuttle docked along the edge of the Guerras’ landing platform behind him.
This was odd behavior for her stepson, as he had not been a child since he was twelve, already trained to maturity by the time Nora had met him for the first time, at her wedding. (She also noticed that while he hadn’t grown much since then, still a few inches shorter than herself, he’d gotten worrisomely thin.) She raised an eyebrow at him to communicate her uncertainty. “Are you feeling okay, Marco?” she asked. “You look ill.”
“I am fine, Ms. Nora,” Marco said. He continued to stand there stiffly, nervous fists tugging at the hem of his embroidered tunic. “Uh… May I come in?”
She considered for a moment, then stepped back. “Sure, honey,” she said, and she stepped aside so that he could enter the Guerras’ Ariel City apartment. As the married couple were comprised of a renowned mathematician and a talented programming engineer, they of course had several homes across the Verse. But this was the one that Marco had grown up in, and the one that Dr. Peter Guerra had, eventually, decided to spend the majority of his time. There was still an almost invisible dent in one wall where, according to Peter, the infamous Captain Jake Berenson had once slipped on the wood floor during a play fight and slammed into it.
When Marco passed by her to enter the home, she leaned in toward him curiously, causing him to jerk aside violently. “You don’t smell drunk,” she observed.
“I, uh…” Marco seemed to hesitate, wringing his hands, then suddenly met her eyes and confessed, “I’m nervous.”
“Nervous?” Nora repeated. She shut the door behind them and looked him over. “About what?” She’d heard stories, of course, but her husband encouraged her not to believe the things that were said about her stepson until he himself confirmed it. Surely, he hadn’t really rejoined the Independent Faction, or else he wouldn’t be standing here on a Core planet under strict control of the Universal Alliance.
Again, Marco hesitated, his gaze drifting away from her before suddenly snapping back to attention. He opened his mouth, seemed to struggle for a moment, then coughed out, “Because… Because I’ve only had this… host for a short period of time.”
Well, that certainly explained… everything. Eagerly, Nora pressed, “Last I heard, Marco was free and active on the border worlds.”
“With the new security precautions against Humanity, news travels a lot slower,” he explained. “I, uh… He left. Um, the IF. Well, not the IF. Captain Berenson.” The poor dear. If he was having trouble sorting his own identity from his host’s, this was likely his first host. Owning someone else’s mind can be very confusing at first. “As I’m sure you know, Berenson was reinstated to his position as an Independent Faction corporal when the resistance organization reconstituted following The Miranda Revelation. No longer infatuated enough to follow him into war, Marco decided to make his way home, albeit by an indirect route. He was infested at the, uh, Devil’s Garden Checkpoint.”
“That is recent,” said Nora. She frowned tightly, disapproving. “You should have waited longer before visiting. Gotten more used to your host. Peter will notice that Marco’s acting out of character.”
“I… apologize?” Marco guessed, apparently unfamiliar with human social norms.
Nora smiled kindly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll help get you through it. It won’t be for long anyway. He’s got an appointment tomorrow!”
Marco’s smile came across a bit forced. “Great!”
“Peter!” Nora called loudly up the nearby stairs. “Marco’s here!” She reached out to pull Marco along, but again, he instinctively twisted out of her reach. She raised an eyebrow at him. “What, you don’t like touching?”
“Uh…” Marco floundered.
“You do know your host is a prostitute?” she said.
“Uh…” Marco said again, his cheeks beginning to heat.
Luckily for him, Nora was still distracted by her husband. “What on earth is taking him?” she wondered aloud. She took a step up the stairs and called, more loudly, “Peter?!”
“Maybe we should check on him,” Marco suggested quickly.
Nora scowled and hummed thoughtfully, but she began advancing up the stairs anyway. “Peter?” she called again. “Peter, did you fall asleep watching the data stream, again?” Behind her, Marco slowly followed after her, hesitating and casting glances all around. “Peter?” She came to the top of the stairs and pushed open the door of Peter’s office, finding him sitting there at his computer, facing the door as though expecting her. If she’d been paying attention, she’d have noticed that the sourcebox for his computer was missing and that he looked very, very nervous.
“Peter, what are you doing?” she demanded. “What are you waiting up here for?”
“For you,” said Peter as Nora stepped through the door. And then she felt cold metal press to the side of her head, just above the ear, as Fox stepped out of the shadows beside the door. They were just as creepy in person as in the wanted posters, every inch of skin covered and a sleek brass helmet with two tips at the crown of the head like ears, another point out in front of the mouth like a snout, and flashing and darting lights dancing across the broad, glossy copper sides. Even more odd were the legs. Fox stood on two below-the-knee brass-colored prosthetics of a vaguely vulpine design, designed entirely as simple machinery, no electronic parts. This apparent lack was made up for by the fact that their entire outfit seemed to be interlaced with miscellaneous electronic devices of indiscernible purpose.
“I’m afraid we’ve been kidnapped,” said Peter from his chair.
“Professor Robinette-Guerra,” Fox said in their eerie digital voice, “if you don’t want brains on the wall, I suggest you obey my every word.” He called out more loudly, “Same goes for you, Companion.”
“You have no idea who you’re messing with!” Nora snarled angrily.
Fox’s laughter came through the helmet’s voice distorter as a weird snapping, sizzling noise. “Lady, I promise that I know exactly who I’m messing with.”
“Honey, I think maybe we should listen to the person with the gun,” Peter suggested meekly.
“Companion Guerra, you still here?” called Fox.
“Um, yes,” said Marco from two-thirds of the way up the stairs.
“How did you get here?” Fox called back.
“I, uh, I took a short-range, intraplanetary shuttle,” said Marco. “It… It won’t take you far.”
“Doesn’t need to.” Fox used the laser rifle they were holding to gesture to the doorway. “Dr. Guerra, Prof. Guerra, you’re gonna follow your son out to his vehicle, and you’re not gonna make a sound the whole while.”
Nora muttered something under her breath, and Fox shoved the rifle’s muzzle at her head again. “Not. One. Sound. Trust me, lady, I get plenty of pay with two of the three of you. Now march.”
Peter stood and carefully guided his fuming wife out of the office and back to the stairs, where Marco was waiting for them, still nervously pulling at his tunic. On the way out of the office, Fox slung the rifle back over their shoulder and grabbed up the sourcebox from where they’d left it on the floor. As Marco lead the couple toward the front door, Fox followed down after them, shoving the corner of the sourcebox into Peter’s back, nearly making him jump. When Peter turned, Fox held the sourcebox out. Frowning in confusion, Peter took it.
Marco opened the door, gave Fox a nervous look, then headed across the massive landing platform to where his shuttle was docked. The Guerra’s luxury apartment was seventy-three stories above ground, and the four of them were about half way across the platform when the police arrived. “The mumbling was you activating the security, wasn’t it?” Fox groused. Nora couldn’t see their eyes, but she suspected Fox was glaring at her.
“As much as I’d love to take credit,” said Nora, “it must have been my husband. He don’t become an engineer by being stupid.”
Fox glanced toward Peter. There was something personally irritated about their mannerisms, and Peter was understandably confused by this response.
“Non-resident identified as Fox, put your hands up!” said one of the police shuttles.
Fox shrugged and said, “We all gotta die someday.” They raised their hands not above them but in front of them, palms of their odd metal-laced gloves facing each other. At first, this action was merely strange, but then there was the tiny sound of a crackle and a shimmer in the air between the gloves.
“No, stop!” Peter shouted, reaching out to grab Fox, but it was too late. They slammed their palms together and everything stopped. Everything electronic within a short distance just turned off. Like a switch had been flipped. Everything, including Fox’s helmet, the devices decorating their jacket and gloves, and the police shuttles. As they were not yet docked to the platform, the police shuttles dropped like stones. There one moment and gone the next.
“Oh god!” Peter cried, clutching at his stomach.
Fox pulled a box out of his coat pocket, opened it, and removed from it a small radio. They shoved it up under the chin of their helmet, lifting the nose just enough to reveal dark olive skin, and said into it, “Shirei Shamayim, you’ll need to take the shuttle one manually.” Their voice was now horribly muffled by a helmet designed not to let sound out, but there was still something oddly familiar about it.
Peter spun toward them, disbelieving. “You… You－!”
“I?” asked Fox.
“You killed them!” Peter cried. “It’s one thing to threaten to… But to just…!”
“A mercy death,” Fox said coldly. “At least now they’re free.” They grabbed Nora and Peter and started pulling them toward Marco’s shuttle. Surprisingly, Marco merely followed along behind without argument or resistance.
“Pointless,” Nora spat. “Your little faction is so fucking pointless! You are never going to be free, and for this little insurrection, you will be ground under Earth’s heel.”
“Oh shut up,” Fox growled, reaching toward the keypad of the shuttle without even glancing toward Marco. Peter looked back and forth between them, uncertain. Fox unlocked the door and shoved them toward the door. “Get the fuck inside.”
But Peter was unmovable. “Why do you sound like my son?” he demanded. “Why do you know the passcode?” Fox stiffened, hesitating. The hesitation was a mistake. Nora lunged forward and yanked hard at where the strap attached to the rifle, making it break and drop with a clatter to the platform. As Fox instinctively moved away from her, she grabbed up the rifle and pointed it at them.
“You two are Andalites, aren’t you?” Nora demanded. “Using Marco to get close to Peter! I bet he’s the only human morph you have!”
“Where the hell did you learn to do that?” Peter demanded, staring at her in disbelief.
“Not now, Dear,” said Nora.
Fox cocked their head in an amused fashion as Marco and Peter watched the two of them carefully. “Professor, I think there is a vital portion of this scenario which you have failed to account for,” they said calmly.
She snorted. “What might that be?”
“Laser rifles need electricity to function,” they said. Then, they punched her hard enough to knock her out. “Okay, kiddies, we’ve had our fun. Now everyone get on the gorram shuttle.” Fox grabbed both Peter and Marco and shoved them inside, where Peter was surprised to find that the shuttle had been pre-prepared for captives, most of its contents stripped out and a partitioning wall erected through the middle of its belly. Marco pulled his father toward the other side of the partition while Fox picked Nora up under the armpits and dragged her inside the shuttle, shutting the door behind them.
Peter sat where Marco put him and gaped in disbelief as his supposed son helped the supposed terrorist move his unconscious wife into a seat where she could be buckled in and then handcuffed with her arms behind her. “You… This was the plan?” he mumbled. “This was why you were coming?”
Fox snorted. “Hey, I tried to tell you the truth once before,” they said. They collapsed into the pilot’s chair wearily. Through the windshield, they could see the back end of a wren-class ship drifting carefully toward them in order to attach to the shuttle. “You didn’t handle it very well.”
There were loud clanks as the Wren locked onto the shuttle. “Get up,” said Marco, now a lot less nervous and hesitant than he had been earlier. He shooed Fox from the pilot’s chair. “I need to monitor the metrics as we break atmosphere to make sure we will be able to jump back into Z-space without dying.”
“Z-space?” Peter repeated. “Z-space is just a theory!”
Fox ignored him, instead sitting next to Nora to strap in for the ride. “Good,” he said to Marco. As soon as he was secured, he finally removed his helmet and shook out his long, wavy black hair. The same hair as Marco’s. Which was fitting, because he had the same face and voice as Marco, too. “The sooner we’re out of the Core, the sooner we can never ever come back.”