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I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what came over me. All I know is that one moment, I was at a family gathering. We were gathered at the dinner table, my mother, my father, my brother, my grandfather, and I. And then the next, a blind rage came over me. When the conversation shifted to the topic of Earth 2’s colonization, everybody at the table began discussing what to do with the planet’s man-eating, alien inhabitants. Numoths, they are called. Horrendous creatures with large mouths, no eyes, and tentacles as dark as night.
I had no reason to get angry. My grandfather had every right to talk ill of those vile creatures. And yet, as soon as he brought up his wish to exterminate each and every single one of them, an insatiable bloodlust overcame me. My vision clouded. All I could hear was screams.
And now I am forced to hide. I know for a fact that my family is horrified by me, and I can’t blame them. I bet stories of a nineteen-year-old woman sprouting tentacles from back, strangling her grandfather with them, and eating the poor old man are all over the news by now.
My life is over.
All around me are trees. Large, towering, trees. Their green canopies cover the ground, turning day into night.
In these woods, nobody will hear me cry.
I don’t know how long I break down sobbing for. I don’t know how many minutes, hours, heck, maybe even days, have passed, but it feels like all of eternity. All I do know is that when I ran away, I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone— or anything— ever again.
I was wrong.
“Do not be alarmed,” a deep, rattling voice whispers. “I know who you are.”
I look up and find myself staring down the face of a black, tentacled creature. A numoth. “Well, who are you?!”
“One of your kind,” the creature replies. “And you must be the girl who was captured and raised by humans at a young age, is that right?”
“What?! No! I am human!” I protest, more to convince myself than the creature. Only a year ago I would’ve completely believed myself, but now I’m not so sure. Surely it was normal for humans to force themselves into a single shape and walk on two legs because shapeshifting in public was unacceptable, right? And surely it didn't take every human all of their willpower to not slaughter and eat their enemies?
The creature gave a low, rattling laugh. “To think you've gotten so good at pretending to be a human to the point where you've fooled yourself! That's a new one,” it remarked. “But I'm afraid that cannot happen anymore. Not when all of the humans on Iophus know who you are.”
“Iophus?" I ask. “What’s that?”
“They call it Earth 2, but that's not its real name. Earth is Earth, Iophus is Iophus. There's no “Earth 2,” whatever that is, and pretending our planet is just another version of Earth is a horribly human-centric way of viewing our home.”
I nod, not knowing how else to react. “Yeah, I guess you're right,” I agree.
“You should be thinking that. We numoths have always lived here, in bliss and harmony, for thousands upon thousands of years. But when the humans invaded and started stealing our land and resources, we had no choice but to fight back. It was fortunate enough that we were able to hunt and eat them, especially when so many of our children were starving, but it's not enough. Now we occupy only a fraction of the territory we used to own, and every day we come closer and closer to extinction.”
A sense of despair clouds over me. “I'm sorry! That must be horrible,” I sympathize. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
The creature smiles in a way that is both comforting and terrifying. “Of course you can. In fact, your abilities and background makes you the perfect candidate to help us get our planet back,” it proclaims. “Now, what’s your name?”
“Vivian,” I answer. “At least that’s the name my human family gave me.”
“And you’re a shapeshifter, right?”
I nod.
“How would you feel about killing the human governor of Iophus, impersonating him, and sending every human on this planet off to war against the numoths while giving us information on our enemies? That way the fight will be in our favor from the start, but the humans will think you’re on their side, and trust you.”
The proposal hit me like a ton of bricks. “That… sounds like a lot,” I say, hesitant to accept or decline too hastily. “I’ll think about it.”
I end up agreeing to the plan.
***
I am standing behind a podium. An audience looks up at me. I have taken the form of an aging man.
They don’t know that their governor is dead and the person speaking to them is actually an alien. They don’t know that I have killed him.
“We have tolerated the numoths, our natural enemies, for too long. We have let them terrorize us, we have let them steal our children, and we have let them take what is rightfully ours. We will not allow this to happen anymore!” I shout, and the crowd cheers after me. “Starting today, the people of Earth 2 will begin what will be the greatest mission of our time: to extinguish these monsters once and for all. Troops have been sent to the aliens’ lairs to ambush them, and some of the brave men who have enlisted may not return. Now let's all have a moment of silence for our soldiers, shall we?”
The crowd goes silent. It feels strange having this much control over a crowd of people, let alone an entire colony.
I give the crowd the rest of the speech, about the current state of affairs and the Council’s plans for the future. They eat up my words like pigs gulping down slop. For a moment I almost feel guilty lying to them, but then I remember that these are humans. They took the home of the numoths and then had the nerve to call us aliens when we were here the whole time. Whatever was coming for them, they deserved it.
***
“Vivian, over here!”
I crawl through the tree branches towards the voice and end up beside Sozell, the chief of the numoths. Below us is a crowd of human soldiers, gathered with their weapons out. My decision as the “governor” to send out the largest troup possible was surprisingly well-received despite its ulterior motives, despite the fact that it was really a plan to gather prey for the other side. And now that the soldiers were all bunched together, they were ripe for the taking.
The chief gives the signal, and at once we drop from the trees, swooping down on the unsuspecting troop. I had deliberately prepared the human soldiers for ground combat, supplying them with faulty weapons and telling them to “always look ahead.” They were not expecting an attack from above.
The plan works. Within minutes, each one of the soldiers are paralyzed, dead, or taken into the trees. All that remains of them on the forest floor are bits and pieces— a broken laser gun here, a helmet there, a bloodstain over in that corner. It was a total victory, though when I go back to the humans, I’ll have to pretend to be saddened by their defeat. I’ll reassure them that we must not back down, we must always hit back harder— only for the cycle to repeat itself, until there’s none of them left. Although they’ll eventually lose faith in me as their “governor,” realistically speaking, I’ll still have power over them. If I can send each and every one off to their deaths, I will.
***
The war goes on.
Every day is the same.
Shapeshift, supply troops, send troops, shapeshift back, attack troops. The human population dwindles, and eventually they're sending off women and children to fight against us, too.
People are protesting my policies as the “governor.” People talk about voting me out of office. The numoths celebrate the victories I've earned them. I follow my tribe's orders.
Or at least I did until today.
It all started when I smelled something familiar, someone familiar. When I followed the scent to its source, I encountered a familiar person: an eighteen-year-old, brown-haired boy. Owen? I thought. My brother?
His eyes were wide and he appeared to be frightened. He held his laser-beam gun out in front of him, tentatively, defensively. He didn’t look like he should be out in the middle of the battlefield in the dead of winter. He looked like he should be at home, relaxing on the couch with a blanket wrapped around him and a warm meal. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. He didn’t deserve to be out here.
The numoth tribe would despise me if they found out, but instead of killing Owen as I've been instructed to, I ended up letting him go.
***
The war is over, and the numoths have won by a landslide. The human population on Earth 2 barely exists now. I am credited for the victory. We feast upon human flesh.
“For decades we've suffered, but the gods have now blessed us with this fine young lady,” Chief Sozell announces. “Let's raise our glasses, to Vivian and the victories she's earned us!”
“To Vivian,” the crowd murmurs, clinking their glasses with each other. The glasses are full of human blood. I take a sip out of my glass. It tastes strange, like water with metal.
The waiters come out with the main course. I detect a body on the plate. Nothing unusual, I think.
But once the waiters set the plate down, I can only look on in horror.
Showers of praise surround me, but I don't feel like a war hero or double agent or master spy whatever I'm hailed as. I feel disgusted, by the numoths, by the situation, but most of all by myself. It's hard not to be when your own brother, the one you tried to save, is being served for dinner. And worst of all, he died in such a horrible way because of me.
As I stare at his body, a flashback from childhood enters my mind:
“Hey, Viv! You should check this out!”
I peek over Owen’s shoulder. His LMG-22 holographic box projects a moving image in the air, one of rolling green hills and mountains dotted with trees. Between the mountains lay valleys with crystal-clear rivers running through them. “Wow,” I mutter. “Where is that?”
“Supposedly this is how our home planet, Earth, looked like before we ran out of resources and had to find other planets to colonize,” Owen explained. The image behind him shifts to a sprawling city with buildings that touch the sky. “Incredible, isn't it?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Don’t get me wrong, Earth 2 is great, but compared to Earth, our planet’s kind of dull.”
Owen smiles in that way only a person untainted by the world could smile. “One day we're gonna move to Earth, buy a big fancy house, and climb a lot of trees! Doesn't that sound awesome?!”
I nod. I don't have the heart to tell Owen that the holographic images are all from the past, and the original Earth is nothing more than a scorched, barren lump. Earth 2 is all we have.
***
“Vivian, aren't you gonna eat?” A numoth asks.
I snap out of my flashback. “No, I'm not hungry.”
The numoths set out their plates and rip out pieces of my brother in that horrifying, animalistic way of theirs. I do not consider myself one of them. But I do not consider myself human, either. I can't be after doing the unspeakable.
I truly am nothing more than scum.