It writhes toward me across the sand, limbs sparking. I scream at the guard, “Put a damn bullet in my chest!” But he just stares ahead. His eyes are puddling like a coward, and I know he won’t. It’s illegal to kill a prisoner on Kambota -- we’re just too damn valuable.

 

It lifts a stony eye at me.

 

A single pupil could swallow me like a black hole. My chest aches from panting.

 

Then it creeps onto me.

 

My spine is whipped backwards; my jaw is clamped shut. The electricity is suffocating. This pain is unimaginable.

It sears my left temple, contorting my face as it drills into my skull. I’m gagging on the vapor of my own burning flesh. I wish I could black out. I wish I could die. But I don’t.

 

I can’t take a single second more.

 

And then we are one.

 

* * *

 

The sky turns ruby when they feed -- it’s actually quite beautiful.

 

Strangely, this is my first thought when I wake up. There’s something about the delicate swirl when their message shoots like a geyser from their bodies to form script in the sky.

 

Compared to the hell I’ve been through, the moment is immaculate.

 

My eyes are too blurry to read the message. Kambotans lust for these precious insights. These monsters hold the keys to our safety in this hostile world: what plants to avoid, the best times to hunt, when the sandstorms will erupt. But without a human language cortex, we don’t get to hear it. We don’t learn. We don’t survive.

 

But at what cost? It’s the question no one dares to ask.

 

The ocean breeze washes the mist from the sky.

 

The medic lifts my discarded body onto a stretcher. I can’t move half my body and I’ll never talk again.

 

“You’re a free man,” the guard says, and I scoff back. Freedom, I think.

 

And when I don’t think that I could possibly break further, he says the words that do just that: There. Was. No. Message.

 

Kambota must be panicking; it has never happened before. I’m worried too, but right now I’m too spent to think a single extra thought.

 

* * *

 

One morning I spot a child crossing the street. He’s five or six years old, stuffing his face with a pastry and staring down my ugly face with curiosity as children do. I’m used to the looks by now. I’m a pest rummaging the streets for food. There’s no reverence for my sacrifice, and my days are lonely.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” he says as he nears me.

 

It’s been rare since my parole that someone has talked to me. I can only grunt and he recoils. I’m charred, infarcted, aphasic, and pitiful. I don’t mean to scare him, but it’s all I can manage. I smile with half my face as best I can.

 

“I’m Jax,” he says.

 

Our hands lock in a shake just as his mother screams from across the way and hurries towards us.

 

“Let him go, freak!”

 

A crowd is gathering around us, but no one makes a move.

 

That’s when something awakens inside me. A moment of clarity fruits deep within my soul.

 

In the heat of the moment, two jets of ruby mist pour from my nose, rising above the crowd into a spiral. The mob steps back. I gently release the boy’s hand, but he remains by my side, his jaw dangling apart.

 

Sparks fall off my fingertips. The crowd gasps. In an instant, I command respect and inspire hope.

 

My mind’s eye exists outside my physical form. I’m looking down at the crowd, at these desperate souls who were so quick to disregard me. It is then that I realize that the monsters are a dying breed. They have gifted me with their vision and our fates are wholly up to us now.

 

I pause in awe of my own power.

 

Do I tell them to abandon these forsaken grounds? To move on? Do I tell them the ends don’t justify the means?

 

And then, I know what must happen.

 

The mist in my nares swirls, forming edges and turns, then letters then words. But in this moment, I snort it in, showing nothing to the crowd. In this moment, what is most important is that we sit together in our stillness and remember.