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Fecto: Stories Untold

By: Cellidor

Chapter 4: Revelation

Diary Entry, 36th R, 3034

I didn't feel anything from him today. If not for yesterday it’d be...almost like things were exactly the same as they've always been. I mean...I can -feel- him, I can tell when he's poking at my head, but it's not like yesterday. If he wants to talk I'll be open, but every time I try to think of something to say I come up blank. I mean, I’m probably accidentally saying things to him by thinking out loud, but if I am, how could I tell? I haven't spoken a word about what happened to anyone obviously. I can't even tell Walter about it. How could I? He'd probably think I was a security breach -and- an idiot...which I guess I am, in a way. Sort of. I don't care. I'd say it must be how he feels, but at least I'm physically -capable- of talking to someone if I wanted to.

Diary Entry, 2nd E, 3034

The weather's been getting really bad lately. I see it more in the news. It's not something that can really be hidden anymore, I guess. It's all too obvious. I wonder how bad it'll get before…? Eh, best not to think about it. No storm can be as bad as that -voice-.

Things had fallen into a bit of a routine again.

Even with a probably impending doom, it’s a marvel how the human mind is able to still find time to get bored. Or maybe I was just numb?

Days going in, going by, same rounds, same people, same work.

If not for Walter and Fecto, I would have left this place as soon as I’d learned. Maybe go on vacation, do something crazy...maybe think of how to end things my own way before the world did it.

Options, at least.

I still didn’t understand why Fecto was doing it, either. Every time he silently probed at my mind, what was the reason? What more did he want to know? More importantly...how much did he know already?

My routine continued. Positions shifted, rounds moved, and once more I found myself standing on one side of Fecto’s capsule.

+...So...you weren’t lying then, I guess.+

The suddenness of his voice in my head made me jolt in surprise. It only now occurred to me that his concentric eye was on me. Here I was, being paid to guard and zoning out like this, well done me. I knew I was in a funk, but still.

<...About what?> As I casually glanced around, glad no one noticed me zoning out.

+That you’re not part of any trap. That you knew of.+

Speaking of the ‘trap’, that energy seemed to have had a lasting effect on Fecto’s body. He’d grown at least an inch taller, and the reds and blacks had crept further up along his body. All the same, he seemed reasonably in control, for now anyways.

<Is that why you’ve been poking at me this whole time? I thought after...that, that you wouldn’t want to talk to me again. I wouldn’t have blamed you.>

I tended to get a little self-depreciative when I was upset. Who knows though, maybe I could have gotten a pass on it this time around given my inexplicable well of sympathy for a sociopathic alien that’d murdered countless lives in a quest for power, on top of not being able to talk to my closest friend about any of these thoughts. But maybe that’s just me.

In either case, Fecto didn’t seem to notice the tone.

+I was poking to make them turn on the trap again. Still thought you were a part of it. Maybe did it just to spite them? Every time they do it they get closer to breaking me free themselves.+

He paused a moment, looking up at the machine I now knew was...well, it was where that horrible energy came out, at any rate.

+But...nothing happened. So I just...kept looking, to see what you'd seen. Big city... the 'burger place'...the look of the sky nowadays, that sort of thing.+

I felt my body tense up. So he couldn’t just read minds, but memories too? So his powers were just as dangerous as Walter and the others had thought. Minds was one thing, but memory delving...that felt worse. As mundane as the things he described were, there were plenty of things I didn’t want people probing around to see.

What’s more, what was this about the energy? Did he just mean his physical size or...was that energy actually making him stronger? So why take such pains to avoid having them set off the machine?

<Then...why not just act up until they accidentally freed you, then? I mean, I’d rather not be anywhere near that thing when it turns on again if I can avoid it, but...>

The energy hurt him, that much was a deterrent, sure, but wouldn’t that be worth it if it meant freedom? Unless this was all just some long con. Maybe it didn’t hurt him at all, and he was just pretending to make sure they didn’t try something else instead, or to work off my own empathy. Just another thing I didn’t know, and I was already feeling somewhat violated knowing he’d been digging around in my history so casually.

<I guess this really was a stupid idea.> I’d say, closing my eyes and resisting the urge to rub my temples.

<”Oh this poor thing, trapped and tortured, I think I’ll commit global treason and communicate with it so it doesn’t feel so lonely”.>

I’d really gotten used to my own dumb ideas by now.

When I opened my eyes again, Fecto was looking back at me again, but his expression seemed...somewhat different? Only I wasn’t the best at reading other people, never mind aliens.

+I don’t act up...because then I'd be trapped in a different way. Worse way. They don't know what they've been putting into me. It's an energy I know I shouldn't touch. Something I should avoid. It’s strong. Unbelievably strong. Only, for every bit it makes me stronger, I lose some of myself. There but gone. Lost in a haze of, voices.+

He squinted, as if trying to find the proper way someone was supposed to describe the indescribable.

+Like having yourself in your head, again, over and over, your voice drowning itself out with more of yourself. I think it’s even worse than that, even. But I can’t try and find out. The more you try and understand it, the more you sink in. I don’t want to know what’s behind the wall. Or who.+

There was a moment of silence between the two of us. I still didn’t know what to think about him, but if nothing else he knew how to paint a picture.

Fecto slowly leaned himself back until he was flat on the capsule floor, one of the two positions he seemed capable of taking that didn’t alert everyone in the room.

There was a pensive look about him. Unlike him, I didn’t have the benefit of being able to read his mind.

+...+

<...>

+...I didn’t revel in it, for what it’s worth.+

I blinked at that. Revel in?...oh.

Well, at least if that wasn’t a lie, he could understand why he was here. Why he couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be let out.

Something about that made me feel better...not by much, but it was something.

<...Just chasing that next step to getting strong, then. A slight misstep, and now you’re here.>

The announcer’s voice cascaded through the room, as another group of tourists came trudging through, all donning their gaudy little Fecto earmuffs.

<Despite all that...I doubt I’d wish any of this on you. Even after all of that.>

In my mind flashed an image of Walter.

<There are even people here who hate you with every fiber of their being who still think this is completely messed up. I know I think as much, especially with...the way you’ve described it.>

+Chasing the next step...+

Fecto took a moment to respond, seemed to be mulling over what I’d said.

+It's what drove me before I ever became aware of what I was. An endless drive, an ambition to keep growing stronger and become more capable. I don't actually know how many planets I consumed with people like yours on them. It was like...+

He paused a moment.

+’Mowing the lawn’. You don’t really think about the bugs down there between the blades.+

It... occurred to me that he was probably using an analogy based on my memories. The way he phrased it made more sense to me in particular than even he probably knew. Couldn’t fault the effort, it’s not like he had much beyond my memories as a frame of reference for this kind of thing.

+Every time I absorbed more life, became stronger, I became more...aware of myself. I think maybe even, maybe a little more like the things I consumed.+

Like some kind of... cosmic virus, slowly coming to life. He raised his hand up, looking at his long, long fingers and how far up the black had encroached over them. As if he’d come to accept that he was stuck here one way or another, that whatever happened to him in the meanwhile, would happen. His gaze softened.

+It wasn’t until two planets ago that...the new voice showed up.+

Wait, I knew this. He mentioned something about it before, too.

<I remember about the voice...do you know what it was?>

This happened as he was...consuming planets? Did that make him develop a...personality? Thoughts beyond just growth maybe? Was that just, how his biology worked?

+Just another part of me. A new ‘emotion’, I didn’t have before.+ He said, as casually as one might say that their hair had grown longer.

+It reacted the strongest seeing new planets and new life, but...reacted the worst as I consumed them. It made me feel something new I hadn’t felt before...I don’t know the word for it. Just this unsettling feeling of ‘I wish I hadn’t done that just now’, only it didn’t go away and felt worse as I grew stronger, worse the more I kept consuming, like this empty pit inside me getting bigger and bigger.+

It was hard to keep my emotions from showing physically.

<You...developed a sense of guilt! O-of regret! That’s what that’s called!>

+’Guilt’. Hmm.+ He took a moment to consider this, to digest this new information...before continuing.

+The planet before this one, was when it first started to talk. Not...actually talk, like you and your other kind do with each other. Like...how you talk to yourself when you think no one is watching.+

I felt my cheeks flush somewhat. Oh good, more memories of mine he’d gleaned. What of it? Lot’s of people talk to themselves, there’s nothing wrong wit-

Fecto raised up one of his large hands.

+On the one hand, I had this endless ambition, driving me to keep going, to go further and become stronger and just consume and consume and become more me.+

His other hand lifted as well.

+On the other, I had this part of me, begging me to slow down, to even stop, to find another way. Something else, anything else. No more screams, no more fire.+

With a visible sigh, both of Fecto’s hands dropped back down with a soundless thump on the capsule floor to either side.

+So...I compromised, with myself. ‘This planet will be different’. ‘This time, I’ll only absorb things without thought, things without will’. I’d be less strong for it, but still growing. Maybe that would appease both of these urges inside of myself. It, did not, go well.+

Like a puzzle piece sliding into place, suddenly everything began to make sense. All those old stories I’d heard about this creature growing up...The news reports...this ‘singular, cosmic invasive species’ that had appeared out of nowhere like some kind of interstellar plague, utterly wiping out plant and most animal life alike wherever it went, leaving nothing but barren dirt and rock behind it...along with anyone who came too close to it, or tried to attack it with whatever weapons they had. Avoiding all of the major cities but leaving the countrysides in ruin…

<You were destroying our ecosystem...We were just acting out of self-defense...A-and so were...you...>

I swallowed hard. Of course. How could something so overwhelmingly powerful, so absolutely destructive, a ‘perfect specimen’ capable of warping reality itself have ever been captured by people with the technology we had at the time? Especially with...considering the circumstances, so few deaths? That one choice, that one decision to avoid any intelligent life, to take his time in consuming things and pacing himself...it gave us exactly the time we needed to study him, study the things he did, his abilities...that one change of his gave us the time we needed to come up with the perfect countermeasure to capture the perfect specimen, before it was too late…

Yet at the same time, I found myself thinking back to that blurry image Walter had shown me, of the ‘thing’ that had escaped from the lab, how he didn’t think it was responsible for the downward spiral our planet started down. This was all entirely just a guess, but...

<Whatever separated from you hasn’t been found...we don’t think that it’s been acting against us in any way either...what...what if whatever compassion, empathy you’d developed and felt...separated from you, became it’s own...species and fled?>

I sure as heck wasn’t any kind of scientist, but I at least had more information to go on now than anyone else had!

<But no one would believe me if I told them you didn’t come here with any intent to hurt us...They’d wonder how I came to that conclusion, and if they knew about the headband...they’d just think I was being manipulated by you!>

Even mentally, my feelings gave away how unbelievably frustrated I was by all of this, wracking my brain for any idea that could maybe help him, but I was just coming up blank.

<I know...you’re not wholly innocent but...>

How did this somehow turn up even more messed up than I’d thought it’d been before?

Yet even that, wasn’t the end of it.

Fecto’s ever-piercing eye casually looked over my way, blinking only once as he spoke.

+Of course it separated from me. That had been my whole intent at the time. It’s unfortunate that I also lost my tool and that it resulted in your species using all of these...new measures...to keep it from happening again...but overall I succeeded in what I had set out to do that day. I freed that part of me. I...I had to...+

His gaze once more drifted back up to the ceiling.

<You did that...On purpose?...>

There had been a distinct...pain in his voice when he’d said it, too. If he considered that a success, then...he hadn’t been planning to escape at all? Walter did mention how no one had expected it, and with how small the rift had been…

<I’m sorry but...the only reason I could think you’d want to do that is to cast off your reservations and regrets...You keep telling me about how much trouble it’d been causing you, and your episode a few days ago...>

And yet, and yet and yet, the pain in his voice. That didn’t sound like someone who enjoyed their success. I had a hunch, but...

<That’s not the reason, is it?>

There was a silence. A long, empty moment as Fecto stared at the ceiling. What I’d give, just for a moment, to be able to know what was going on in that head of his. See his history, what he’d gone through.

After a time, Fecto’s voice returned.

+...No. That side of me, that wanted us to stop. The side that began ‘caring’ for the planets we visited...It was so utterly happy when we were first captured. There was an...amount of time, a long time, where I chose to...go into myself. Let this new aspect of myself run the show, while I became the ‘voice in the background’, waiting and thinking things over, working with my deepest ambitions and planning how to escape as soon as possible...+

How long could that have been? These labs didn’t have any windows, no frame of reference for how much time had passed, and even the daily tourists hadn’t come from the start. He’d have no idea how long he’d been here for, experimented on, observed, and gawked at once the tours started up.

<And you’ve been here since before I was even born...>

I took a breath, mulling it over.

<Did you separate to try and free this ‘voice’ from the capsule first then, rather than both of you being trapped here? Just let it escape, and then yourself?>

Surely he’d know the risks of letting the scientists know he could escape in parts, right? Why not just wait longer, until he could leave whole-cloth? Why only that side?

+No...I...did it to save it from what this place, had done to it.+

Fecto sat himself up, slower than I’d ever seen him do before. He rested his elbows on his legs, staring listlessly ahead, subsumed in memory. For whatever reason, being so lost in thought seemed to deepen whatever psychic connection he was using to talk to me.

I’d get my earlier wish.

I didn’t just hear him...I saw things. I saw myself...as him, how he remembered himself. There I was, sitting in that capsule. I could see in this memory a reflection of himself as he was then. He looked...so, so very different than he did now. His fur was a bright and brilliant teal, eyes looking more alive, horn glowing gold instead of red, and bright yellow fur lining those big ears of his. He seemed so much more...delicate...gentler than he did now. Not to mention shorter too, only a bit taller than I was!

What was he doing? Leaning towards the glass ahead...closer and closer...his breath, my breath, rolling over the glass and fogging it up some.

In this memory, I saw him raise one of his long digits up, as he tried to...draw something on the glass, using the fog.

The memory felt hazy, shifting as I heard, felt Fecto describing to me the things he recalled.

+While I was busy deep in my thoughts, planning and plotting away, he was trying to get to know the intelligent creatures around him. Trying to learn their language, trying to interact with them in any way he could imagine. Trying to… ‘make friends’, I guess. I didn’t mind it. It was more information I could use later when we eventually broke free. I knew it’d have to be a good plan, especially if I was going to escape without killing them all, and put to waste all his efforts and upset him all over again.+

The vision shifted, Fecto murmuring to himself.

+You know...thinking about it, I believe it did end up having a name...gave itself one, something it thought would sound nice to their ears. I...think, it went with ‘Elfilis’.+

To witness someone else’s memories as if they were my own was surreal. Looking through their eyes, almost feeling what they felt…I felt lightheaded, but still listened just as intently as I ever had.

<Elfilis...I see. But the capsule...it doesn’t let sound out, only in...>

I didn’t know whether it was a design meant for safety, or out of spite. Small wonder, then, that Fecto would have wanted to get even some aspect of himself out of here.

<But you’re still stuck in here either way. Wouldn’t it be worth it to just wait?...Get out of here together?>

+That I’m stuck here is temporary. I’ll get out one way or another. If not because of their own actions, then because of what they’re bringing down on themselves. I can handle it.+

His head turned part-way towards me, looking at me with both of those eyes of his. I felt my mind haze over again as he, knowingly or not, drew me into another old memory.

+...You know, it occurs to me...not too long before I split, that was the first time that I ever felt… ‘rage’. I’d absorbed dozens of planets, never feeling any negative feelings towards them. If anything...I liked them. Each and every one were helping me to improve. I appreciated every planet I took with me. But this place...+

My vision shifted...I saw myself once again, in the capsule. Saw myself as I...as Elfilis, tried over, and over, and over again to interact with the people around them...being faced only with distrust and fear. Elfilis, what seemed to be such a bright, cheerful, hopeful soul...and not a single being looked at him with kindness, wouldn’t even look him in the face.

Attempts to communicate verbally...nothing. Psychically...blocked off and shut down like his was some kind of corrupting touch. He never stopped with his relentless optimism and kindness, his dreams of ‘what could be’, but...I felt it. Through the memory in my mind I could...I could feel how every single rejection chipped away at him. Little by little, piece by piece. Just a bit more every, single, time.

+This place...+

And then the memory changed. They were now in the days of the tours, back when they’d first started up.

That flash of renewed hope at seeing all of these new faces...yet none of them looked on him fondly. None of them could hear him, none of them interested in him as anything more than some dangerous, caged threat to gawk at.

And that tour guide...that voice...back then it wasn’t a recording. Back then it was an actual person. A person standing there in front of the capsule with a microphone, recounting to the new people over and over and over again about the desiccation left in his wake. Naming the thousands of species wiped out, the lands left unlivable, cherished landmarks stripped down bare...family members lost.

Day in...day out... hearing and endless stream of people be told how horrible he is, how awful, how terrible, how great it was that he could be captured now, kept and studied to do good while he himself was left in isolation.

Elfilis, began to break.

He cried... and it only got worse. No matter how long or how hard, it didn’t matter.

No one would comfort him. Not even Fecto, too lost in his subconscious plans.

In fact, all his tears lead to were new stories for the announcer to spin. Telling new visitors that ‘the specimen’ could learn to mimic emotions as a way to try and trick people. That’s why so many people died, they said, because they were fooled by how it looked and sounded, into thinking there was any shred of real consciousness within it.

Fecto could have suffered through it. Isolation didn’t bother him as much, lies only a minor annoyance, but...Fecto wasn’t there.

Elfilis was alone.

Alone as this place took his pure, innocent heart and stepped on it, over, and over, and over again.

Until one day, Fecto awoke, brought back to the forefront of mind and in control of their body by a soul he scarcely recognized.

Elfilis wasn’t radiating hope anymore...but nothing.

Nil.

Emptiness.

He didn’t have a cruel bone in his body, not even for the people who’d treated him so harshly.

So when the kindness was gone, there was nothing left to replace it.

The true breaking point happened only days later...the day of the ‘event’.

On that day, Elfilis finally spoke about why he brought Fecto back. He said something that still burns in Fecto’s memories, words that seared into my own mind just as much as they’d done his.

That day when a once hopeful and pure soul said to him, devoid of even the tiniest fragment of life:

“Just let me die”

And something about that...made Fecto snap.

Careful plans tossed aside. Years of preparation crafting the perfect escape all thrown away. A new plan made. Not cold, not calculating, not precise. Conjured up in a moment of pure passion manifest.

Raw.

He took up that spear, the same one seen in the labs deep below, as the room erupted with raw cosmic power. He gripped it and, eyes wide, plunged it through the fabric of space, ripping a hole from in front of him to just feet outside of the capsule, energy crackling and swirling around the room as desperate cosmic energy fought against the perfection of a cage designed to nullify everything he was, like trying to fight against himself.

No control.

Not enough energy to truly break free.

But it was enough.

Enough to pull Elfilis away, Fecto ripping himself body and soul in two. He took everything that Elfilis was, and kept all of what had broken him, all of the memories of this nightmarish place, and kept each of them to himself.

Only then, could he be truly freed, as with all the energy he could muster Fecto sent Elfilis far, FAR into the world, far enough that they wouldn’t be able to find him ever again.

And then, the rift closed...and with it, Fecto’s spear on the other side, too late to try and pull it back. Gone, leaving him with only a fraction of his powers...no spear, no Elfilis, only memories.

+This place...was not for him. Not here. Not with them.+

No memories at all, no baggage, no nightmares, just a new soul. A clean slate, full of hope and cheer just like before, just a big crybaby ready to make new friends and new memories without...without having to live chained down by the history of all the horrible things I...what Fecto had done.

+...Not here with...me. He didn’t deserve that.+

The visions slowly cleared away. I felt like I was...back in my own head again. I could tell by the look on his face...he hadn’t intended to show me any of that. I just stood there, numb, as Fecto just laid back onto his back, and rolled over to the side, facing away from me. His ears curled in over his body, almost like some kind of blanket.

I wanted to look away. I didn’t want to see him like that, I didn’t want to be feeling the things I was feeling, have experienced those memories. I had to watch him. Had to, to not be suspicious...it was my job, to watch him. Watch the specimen. Watch the murderer.

My throat tightened, having to bite my lip as I felt tears trying to force their way out of me.

I was already an emotional person at heart...and this hit like a godsdamn truck.

I wanted to say something...anything...but, I decided against it.

Given everything else, I didn’t want Fecto to have to worry about someone having seen his most painful memories like that...not right now.

He didn’t deserve that.

- - - - -

Diary Entry, 2nd E, 3034

I remember when I used to write entries that weren't just about me bitching but here we are. ‘Careful what you wish for’ was what I said as a joke on my first day being moved to the upper lab. I didn't expect it to wind up being so true. He's all I think about. I don't think any human being was meant to go through the emotional turmoil I have over these past few days, never mind everything he went through. There’s a little creature out there alone, Fecto is miserable and just waiting for his freedom, whether from his own whim, their mistakes, or the mass extinction we're all speeding toward. The world is ending and I can’t do anything.

I don't even care anymore. I don't feel much of anything now. I wonder if that's worse than feeling miserable.

It's a bleak and depressing train of thought, but every day I'm being left with less and less options on what -my- emotions should do.