Hindsight belongs to those who have the luxury of second chances. Regret presumes there are forks in the road. The agony of wishing to change one’s past comes with the subtle and often begrudging acknowledgement that one can amend their future, however small that may be.

  Those freedoms were taken from us, the survivors of humanity in the distant future. I didn’t fully realize it, but I understood far more of Amon Russ as I was unplugged from the feeding tubes and the cortical filaments sucked from my flesh. As I lay gasping on that floor while the Xurak doctor took readings with some strange instrument, I came to the somber idea that there was nothing in my choices which could’ve changed this outcome.

  There was no avoiding this. There was nothing I could’ve done better or smarter, no chance to have foreseen this nightmare—except that Kairon had warned me. The others too, in their own ways. They had all known that some catastrophe was coming in my life. They didn’t need to petition the Solathan Oracle to deduce that.

  In the great fatalistic texts of the Pajjarns, a common theme runs throughout. That to form connections, to create bonds, to tie oneself to another, it to invite tragedy. That no matter what, everyone departs you the same. As I sign the order for a thousand ships to deploy to their worlds, I admit that I agree with the second part.

  However, speaking as the boy who suffered on that Xurak ship, I must contest that it is the opposite. Tragedy is the natural order of things. It invites itself regardless of what you do. But if that child had had a nation, a people, a real home—shields against the likes of the Xurak, then none of what had happened on that ship needed to pass.

  We create bonds because they shield us from a thousand worse tragedies. Those who are lucky enough to enjoy such protection rarely think of the lives they would’ve had without. To rely on other people isn’t weakness. It’s the only bulwark against the storm we have.

  I didn’t have a homeworld to fight for me. I didn’t have a fleet or an army or even a tribe.

  All I had in that moment was a single man—the man who was now my father. Because of the lives we were destined to lead, he wasn’t able to shield me from the horrors of the galaxy. He wasn’t able to protect me from the Xurak. He wasn’t even able to save that simple boy raised by the insects. That child was gone the moment the Xurak doctor finished his bloody work.

  However, that one man was able to save my life, my future. Of the days Amon Russ suffered, the man who sacrificed so much for a child who was doomed to experience every misery anyway, I only wish he had known the difference it made.

  …

  The Xurak doctor had led me to the surgical table again. And although I am sure he had methods to compel me, he needed none of them. I walked blithely to the physician’s altar and laid down for whatever he had planned for me. But instead of going to his tools, the doctor paced around the surgical bed, deep in contemplation.

  I did not care, for I was nothing more than a corpse on the table, inert and uncaring.

  “I’ve reclaimed many others of your kind,” the doctor began, speaking in a low voice. “Most of whom came before the war. You are blessed. Most we made warriors, reclaimants are good for little else. The unusable we processed for the recombination sequences. But even the graced who found themselves here were only fit to be aesthetes. They had no deepness in them. The Queen wants you a work of art, and that is a difficult thing for a sculptor.”

  “Why?” I asked, in spite of myself. The dead body was curious of its captor’s intentions, even as it told itself that none of it mattered.

  The Xurak doctor stopped in front of one of the tanks and inspected the silhouette inside. “It is not that we are blank tapestries, unmarked. Flesh is only the first art and the easiest to work upon. The Queen desires more than that, and I must join together materials deeper than your bones. It is one thing for an artist to create his own work. It is far harder for him to finish the work of another’s.”

  “Who is the other?” I stared up into the light-field.

  The Xurak doctor turned to me. “A name that has been forgotten. Our ancestors knew the Truth of All Things, and it was so horrible to them that they threw it into darkness, preferring their own vision for the cosmos. They chose their own wants, as do we all.”

  “What does the Queen want me to be?” I asked.

  “She wants you to be The Mashiach, the one who listens to the voices below. You will peer into their dreams and hear the hidden words.”

  “Why?”

  The Xurak doctor stepped up to the surgical table. “As this galaxy was spoken into existence, so too shall it end with a command. You shall reach to the below and bring it forth, or you shall become like the others who came before you. My name is Sifter-of-the-Newborn. But if you prove to be the one, it will be Deliverer-of-the-Way.” The Xurak doctor bowed to me. “I am most honored to be your counselor.”

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  I permitted myself a quick glance to my new doctor. “I do not care,” I said.

  If the Xurak physician took any offense to that, he did not show it. He rose and simply contemplated over his tools for a long while, considering things I had no earthly idea of. Finally, he selected a long scalpel and held it up.

  “I think I shall start with your eyes,” he told me kindly.

  …

  I wiped away tears mixed with blood as I was presented in the palace once again. The Xurak Queen was sitting on the steps to the throne, sickly holometrics surrounding her. Fleet arrangements, communication with the other queens, and battle reports were all rendered at her fingertips, and she appeared busy with the final conclusion of the invasion.

  As I crossed the wide distance, I considered throwing myself through the portum. It did not matter to me where I would end up or whether I died. Anywhere would’ve been better than this awful place. But as I got closer to the edifice and heard the skin-crawling whispers, I realized that there might’ve been worse places than with the Xurak. I approached the Queen and numbly fell on my knees.

  She closed the holometrics and looked at me with the deepest sadness. “It is not your place to kneel. I beg you, rise.”

  I did not want to, as my legs were no longer my own. But the Queen’s voice was too powerful to resist, and I stood up.

  “I don’t understand why,” I said, exhausted.

  The Xurak Queen seemed genuinely concerned as she rose from the steps and approached me. “It is not that we desire to inflict pain upon you. It is that we desire to make you something beautiful, and this cannot be achieved by taking the shorter path.” She kissed me on the forehead.

  That was enough to incite a violent reaction. I surprised myself as I tried to hit the Queen with my fist. My body moved faster than my thoughts, but the Queen caught my arm, nails drawing blood even though she did not press down on my pale flesh.

  I stared at her blankly while she had nothing but kindness on her face. She spoke to me with nothing but a mother’s love. “I know that you hate us. Do not worry yourself. We do not need your cooperation for what is to come. And once the work is complete, you will thank us.”

  “I do not hate you,” I lied.

  The Xurak Queen twisted my arm, examining my newly grafted skin. “You do in your bones. So do all the humans we’ve saved. Your body knows to hate these intrusions even if your mind does not. I can hear the weeping of your mother written in your veins. Would you like to know her name?”

  “Her name is Ingrish,” I flatly replied.

  “Your second one, yes. She has left different marks, far more subtle. Don’t be anxious of our methods. Your physician has already noted the changes, and he will not overlook them in his work. But what I speak of are far deeper substances.” She tightened her grip and more blood welled up. The Xurak Queen examined the red trails closely. “Your mother’s name was Sarai.”

  “How?” I asked, confused.

  “All things are made with words, just in different ways. Every cell in your body is a chorus that resolves into a single song. And this has been painstakingly brought forth in infinitesimal detail. The galaxy overlooks this because they do not see the way of things, but we have given you new eyes. Shall I show you?”

  I blinked, and I was somewhere else. I was on a strange ship. A mother cradled her baby, looking worried out of a viewport. She had a heart-shaped face and blue eyes, blond hair falling to her shoulder in a braid. That was as much as I could bear to see before I tore my arm away from the Xurak Queen, but the image didn’t vanish. The Queen calmly placed her hand on my shoulder as I panicked. The emotion buried in myself swelled to more bloody tears. I had to hold back from sobbing as my heart lurched in my chest with agony I did not realize existed.

  “It is not that I am showing this to you,” the Xurak Queen explained. “It is not a fabrication. These are the thoughts and memories that flow through your blood. This is your history. And this is what we must nurture for your candidacy.”

  I leapt back. “I don’t want to be your Mashiach!”

  The Xurak Queen laughed. “You think that is some detail we have forced upon you? Mashiachs are not chosen by us. You were always destined for the Molohkai, for the sacrifice. That is written too, and not one word can be changed. You have already poured your blood for the gods below, events would not have transpired otherwise. Your history aches for what is to come.”

  She pointed, and I saw the image change. My mother disappeared, and I saw great cannon fire hit the small colony vessel as greedy eyes upon it. I saw the ship flee all the way to the Druskarus Sector. I saw its flaming wreckage fall on Ghiza VI. I saw—

  “Make it stop!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  The images dissipated, and I found myself once again in the Xurak palace. I realized I had stepped awfully close to the portum, but before I could move away from its whispers, the Xurak Queen gently held me and wiped away my tears.

  “All will be yours to command, even your history. It already is. It need not be a reason for suffering for you.”

  My body reacted again. My hand reached down into the folds of my clothes, and I found a scalpel—the same one the doctor had used and mistakenly left for me to take on the surgical tray. Without thinking, I drove it into the Xurak Queen’s neck, and I gasped with terror at my action a second later.

  The Xurak Queen’s kind expression didn’t flicker as blood spurted out of the wound. Quietly, she tugged on the scalpel and dropped the bloodied instrument to the floor. The opening in her neck clotted a moment later. “Do not worry. We have many centuries to prepare for the hour.”

  Another vision crossed my eyes. I was sitting on that glass throne with pallid skin and scarlet eyes. I looked up, and I saw a murdered star, hundreds—no thousands of Xurak ships silhouetted in its pale light. It felt as real and certain as if it had already happened. I looked down from the throne, and I saw myself, standing near that portum with the Xurak Queen. And I smiled.

  I thrusted my arms out, trying to push this image away.

  The Xurak ship violently shook under our feet, shaking me from this vision of the future. Up above, I saw the dark clouds above turn to stars as a great wound opened in spacetime. Dark space spilled out into empty vacuum and us along with it. We had been caught enroute between star systems, and staring above, I saw a ship of strange design. Its hull was blown apart, deep gouges revealing entire decks exposed to outer space. It looked like it was barely held together, but I saw genuine fear in the Xurak Queen’s eyes as she cowered at the battered human warship.